Requiem for the Dream
by Aroihkin
Summary: [DARKFIC] [AU] [WIP] The heroes have fallen and Galcian's time has finally come, but how long will it last? More to the point when you have all that you thought you wanted, what do you do then? Ramirez main POV, rated T for dark themes and violence.
1. entry 01 :: humanity saved

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 03.08.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 01: humanity saved )

"--and that is all, Lord Galcian." the messenger finished, his voice a little cracked by nervousness. His head was down, and his right fist was held to his left shoulder, kneeling through-out his report before the throne in proper respect. Jade green eyes watched the messenger squirm just a little--impassively, dully, as the powerful man seated next to him took in the news.

Lord Galcian had a thoughtful look to his features, staring at the wall over the messenger's bowed head as he mulled the news over. He was perfectly fine with letting the man shiver and gulp while he thought, as he always took time in his work; not enough to be considered indecisive, certainly, but never rash either.

Ramirez, too, thought about the routine check that had just been confirmed, ignoring the dull throb of his left hand. The remains of the Valuan capital had been searched carefully by the New Reign's military, years ago, and all survivors had been executed on the spot. Including one Admiral Alfonso, the Silvite remembered without regret. The egotistical man's head had been presented to the ever-careful Lord Galcian by Ramirez himself.

Despite Alfonso's lack of competency in the old order of things, the new Lord had not wanted to gamble on the boy finding some grain of ability and organizing a rebellion. After all, for all his lack of skill, the First Admiral of Valua had still been an icon of the old way of things. That alone qualified him as a threat, right along with the likes of the Blue Rogues... who had also been wiped out thoroughly.

Wind Mill isle, the base of Dyne, had been visited a second time--and this time... well. This time it had been blown up completely... spilling a surprisingly large underground area full of pirates and their families into Deep Sky. The Silvite had witnessed it himself, calmly, impassively, from the bridge of the Monoceros.

A string of giant drums of gunpowder bombs had been licked at by the burning buildings, and one shot... just one shot... from the Silvite's own flagship had set them all off in a chain reaction. An unstoppable progression of rumbling, fiery explosions that would have left the late Admiral DeLoco in tears of joy. They had been powerful enough for Ramirez to feel them through the warship he stood inside of, tremors shaking through the air and metal between him and the chaos.

The hollow island had shuddered, trembled, and then cracked messily down the center. That chain of house-sized containers had continued... relentlessly... until the land itself had finally crumbled in upon the screaming, bleeding, terrified humans hiding inside. And then that last, fatal barrel had gone off on impact, like the ending note to a war song, and the entire island had fallen apart... racing for Deep Sky with the remaining humans in tow.

Crescent Isle had been visited as well, and similarly destroyed... as had all known bases of pirates both Blue and Black. There simply was nothing more to be found of any of those bases, they no longer existed. Nothing could have made Ramirez think twice about what he was doing--not the shrieking of the children, not the howling of pets, not the sundering of the ground.

Anything his Lord asked of him, he would do without doubt, without hesitation. Ramirez's loyalty was--and had always been--completely unquestionable.

That had all, however, been many years ago. The wounds of the world were still fresh, but healing smoothly under Lord Galcian's iron control. There was no more greed--for the act of selling anything had been banned, no more stealing--for no one had much to gain and too much to lose if they were caught, and no more... evil. Ramirez straightened slightly, bolstered by a new wave of pride in being able to help Lord Galcian's world come to be... as he always was whenever he thought about it.

Lord Galcian was the world's new God. He controlled their food, their supplies, their rules. Through Zelos he controlled the very weather... every aspect of the people's otherwise-misguided lives... leading them as the stupid cattle they really were. Any uprisings were squashed, the very sun was denied to those regions who allowed for crime in the smallest forms for weeks at a time.

Human kind had, invariably, learned to bow before him, learned to grovel. The Soltisian Armada's carefully-chosen spies only confirmed these facts further and further with every passing day.

Ramirez was content to serve this man, who had brought about the new order where humans did not have the choice to be evil. They did not have the opportunity to exercise their corruption... and someday, someday... they would no longer even need this iron-grip guidance. It would be their new nature, their new way of life, without so much as a blink. They would know no other path but to continue in Galcian's image of the new world.

They would learn to live and breathe under his ways, as Ramirez strived to do himself every day. The Silvite lowered his eyes in thought as his Lord... his God... summoned the next messenger of the day's long list.

Humanity had finally been saved from itself.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	2. entry 02 :: the treasonist wench

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 03.10.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 02: the treasonist wench )

The cold atmosphere of the dark marble floor felt suiting, somehow, of the mood the young man was in. Ramirez walked calmly down the long stretch of corridor, intent simply on reaching his quarters by the longer and more time-consuming route of the palace. Each step he took clinked metallically against the stone, and his boots would have slid as badly as though on oil were it not for the strategically placed strips of traction melted carefully to the bottom of the steel paused, turning partially to regard a soldier running towards him, hurried steps echoing along the lengthy hall. The soldier slowed to a walk in the final few feet of his path before halting entirely and bowing low, right hand clenched to his left shoulder. Sighing mentally, Ramirez turned the rest of the way, resigned to having to put up with the bowing and other time-wasting formalities.

"Lord Ramirez...!"

"Yes?" he prompted after a moment, raising one impossibly-white eyebrow as he stared down at the soldier's back, his expression otherwise neutral. The Silvite did not care for being bowed to and called Lord, as to him those signs of respect belonged only to Lord Galcian... not to his servants. It drove home to the young man that he was the second most powerful in the world, in the current order of things, and he did not want to be even so close to Lord Galcian's rank.

It was uncomfortable to say the least, and not desired at all... especially at times like this when it mattered for naught but extra irritation.

"Lord Galcian wishes to speak to you in the throne room." the young soldier said, straightening quickly. This one had dealt with Ramirez enough over the last few years to know that doing anything more formal than what was strictly required by rank would earn only the pale man's annoyance. And that, naturally, wasn't an enjoyable thing to deal with by any stretch of the imagination.

The Silvite's only response to this announcement was a short nod, and then he immediately began walking again. Only this time he moved in the direction from which the soldier had ran, opposite to his original destination. This was life, these days, and Ramirez rarely ever left the Soltis Tower or the Palace additions. They were headquarters, they were... if not quite home, then as close as the young man had ever considered anything.

He preferred to stay at his Lord's side, should the need ever arise for him to do something, anything, whatever Lord Galcian asked of him. No price would ever be too high, not his freedom, not his dreams of exploration and adventure in his youth. He remained ready and at hand as a good weapon should. It was the least he could do to be useful in these times of... if not complete peace, then near enough to it to still make the pale tactician somewhat obsolete.

The new palace had been built--literally--around the old tower of Soltis, connected to the ancient Silvite building by five hallways extending out into the circular rings of new-palace. This building itself was a mere five stories in height, but hovered near the top of the tower. It was supported underneath by tall columns of pure white steel and further bolstered by Zelos itself. A strange construct, but fitting nonetheless.

Climbing a short flight of stairs at the end of one of those same connecting hallways, Ramirez silently pushed the single door open and entered the throne room. As usual, he took a bare moment to absorb the surroundings before walking in further... Zelos throbbing high above the altered chamber catching his attention immediately as it always did.

The Silvite's left hand ached dully to the rhythm that the mighty Gigas beat--vaguely matching his own pulse as the last living Silvite. It was in a state of slumber, however, awaiting its next command and floating passively... like some gigantic, faceless version of Fina's Cupil. The same technology and magic had been put into both, he knew, so the comparison was not very far off.

"Ramirez." the voice tore his attention from the Gigas as the Silvite dropped his gaze to the seated man who so often occupied his thoughts, but yet was almost always pushed aside by the Gigas whenever the Silvite laid eyes on it. Bowing even lower than the soldier had to him, his own right fist clenched to his left shoulder, Ramirez blushed faintly and mentally reprimanded himself. How could he allow the Gigas--not even awake--to distract him from his Lord so often?

"Come here, Ramirez, I have a job for you." Lord Galcian did not sound surprised nor angry, at least. He had some idea of how much the Gigas and Ramirez shared in link, and it was understandable if the younger man would once in a while drift off into thought while watching the ancient weapon of his race.

"Yes, Lord Galcian." the Silvite all but murmured, straightening to walk to his Lord's side, not so much as sparing a glance for the other occupants in the room. Not until he was standing in his customary spot by the older man's throne did he passingly note the others; two guards and an unknown woman. But he turned his full attention back where it rightfully belonged without further assessment.

The object of his loyalty and current gaze was watching the stranger fixedly, a calculating gleam shining clearly in his ice blue eyes.

"This is Lena." Lord Galcian said, finally, gesturing to the stranger with one dark-gloved hand without taking his powerful stare off of her. Ramirez took the cue, tearing his gaze from his Lord and turning it on the woman herself, now finally taking the time to look more closely. Light brown hair, cut as short as his own, framed an ordinary face with pale green eyes. Her clothing suggested she was from the region of the Red Moon, but only vaguely so. A traveler, perhaps, and yet the Silvite's suspicious side prickled at something he couldn't quite place.

"You will show her around the palace, and assess her... usefulness to me." said his Lord. The unspoken addition was that he would decide if she was to be trusted or not, which was interesting in its timing as he had just been wondering the same. Why she was here at all was unknown to him, but Ramirez did not question her presence if Lord Galcian saw no reason to inform him yet. The Silvite turned his gaze back to the older man, nodding once.

"Yes, a... tour of the premises, if you will. Go, then, and I expect a report immediately after." his Lord seemed at ease about this, at least, even if the command was a strange one.

"Yes, Lord Galcian." he stepped back from the throne, bowing low once again, before turning and heading for the woman with his usual deliberate pace. The throne room had not been altered much... the space between the dias and what had formerly only been a walkway had been bridged, for the most part.

The main thing of note was that the open area above Zelos had been left wide, allowing the round Gigas freedom for its nightly rise to soak in the silver moonlight. While the weapon itself did not derive any extra power or ability from moon-bathing, it seemed to... enjoy... simply floating in the beams of its parent moon. Lord Galcian was more than willing to allow it this small pleasure, albeit with a small patching spell in place to keep the weather out.

Realizing belatedly that he'd once again allowed the Gigas to overtake his thoughts, enough to make him pause entirely, Ramirez forced his attention back to the matter at hand. Lena, is what Lord Galcian had called the stranger. The Silvite approached her and the guards... gesturing that they should all follow him before he stepped past and left the room through one of its many doors.

Here was a stairway identical to the one he'd come up a few minutes before, and beyond that, a hall just like the one before. The same sort of marble, the same feel, he could only tell the difference between each hall himself from experience... having lived in this palace off and on since it had been built at the beginning of his Lord's reign.

"This is Yeligar Hall, top floor." Ramirez began, voice low and to the point, but he was cut off immediately.

"Yeligar?" Apparently the strange woman would not just follow and listen, but was going to make him repeat himself as well. The Silvite shot her a glance as they continued walking.

"...Yes," he continued after a second's pause, his tone gaining a thin layer of frost, "Yeligar Hall. Top floor. It is the North hall--pointing directly towards Valua." Ramirez waited a moment before continuing. "The names of the halls are the same on all five levels, and the paths beneath the palace itself. Bluheim points Northeast at Yafutoma, Recumen points East toward the kingdom of Nasr, Plergoth heads South toward Glacia, and Grendel points directly West toward Ixa'Taka. There are five levels to the palace, and from above it is a perfect circle around the top of the tower."

A long pause, during which the Admiral led the woman through the hall, the two guards trailing just out of earshot should he need to summon them. It was a small precaution, not really necessary with his abilities and the sword others whispered that he could draw out of thin air itself. But their presence worked to at least drive home to this woman that she would not be leaving before his assessment of her was through. And it would be a short one, if his initial instinct was correct.

"I... see." Lena murmured, following with some hesitance.

"They are named after the Gigas that each land created." Ramirez explained, encouraged by her lack of a question immediately following all the names and directions. He wished to be thorough with the tour he'd been told to give, until it was not needed anymore, and this unfortunately meant he'd answer her questions.

"What about the... Silver?" such as that one. Ramirez did not answer for a while, instead taking the moment to open the door at the end of the hall. Beyond was the wide ring of outer palace, marble and steel with large outward-pointing windows and comfortable wooden benches. The main living quarters were two levels down, this was more of a receiving floor than anything else. It had a dining room for guests, kitchens, the usual utilities, and a set of large gardens for morale.

He gestured her through, waited a moment, and then followed, allowing the door to slide shut. The guards would open it themselves when they reached it.

"You have already met the Silver Gigas, Zelos... all of the hallways point back towards it." said the Silvite, "It is the heart of Soltis."

Lena gaped at him openly, and he noted the stunned expression with some irritation from the corner of his eye. Obviously she had either not asked Lord Galcian about the massive silver orb hovering high in the throne room, or he had simply not told her. Most who dealt with Lord Galcian just assumed it was a decoration unless they had a sense for magic, and then they could rarely resist asking... however hesitantly, and however fearfully.

"If Lord Galcian did not tell you what it looks like, I have no reason to either." Ramirez said, cutting her off when she moved to speak, "Only know that you were, in fact, standing in the same room as the Gigas--and that Lord Galcian could have called it to crush you in a moment's notice."

Impatient though he may have been with those who didn't themselves feel the impact of the Silver Gigas' presence, he still knew that Zelos' appearances were quite deceiving. Ramirez understood, fully, that he only thought of the orb as truly massive because of its affect on him.

The Admiral was simply not one to allow any reoccurring thought to cross his mind without jumping upon it, pinning it down, and dissecting it to see what made it so. It hurt, certainly, sometimes more so than others, but there were worse things in life than pain. He considered ignorance to be one of those things, especially if your own mind was the subject.

His hand ached constantly to one degree or another, depending on how close he was to the Gigas at the time. He had grown accustomed to the dull throb of the Silver Crystal, but he knew that if Lord Galcian ever called Zelos closer while he was present, that he would be in agony... and if he ever -_touched_- it...

Well, so far as he knew, no one survived Zelos' touch. Silvite or not... just as no one survived Lord Galcian's ire.

"This is the dining area," Ramirez spoke, breaking the silence and pausing to gesture into an open set of double doors leading inwards back toward the tower. The room within was very large--it and the kitchen combined spanned the space between the Yeligar and Bluheim Halls, minus the wide gap between its inward-curved wall and the outside of the original tower.

His guest glanced in once and then looked up and down the empty hall around them. Ramirez waited for the burst of questions about Moons-knew-what, and was taken a little by surprise by what actually came out of her mouth in a sudden, urgent tone.

"Lord Ramirez, I'd like to talk to you about something other than the building." Lena said quietly, her tone pitched to not carry down the rounded halls. However, he ignored her entirely.

"The main kitchen is in here as well." the Silvite continued calmly as though she had not spoken at all.

"Ramirez--" this time he did pause, staring at her with irritation. Her clothing again struck him as suspiciously odd. The trousers were of a common cut from the Nasrean area, but the vest... looked altogether too uniform with its strange embroidery, laced over her tunic. Something about it specifically set him on alert, though he still couldn't quite place it.

Still, Lord Galcian had told him to give her a tour, and he intended to do just that. If she wished to interrupt him every other sentence this would be a long process indeed...

"I am," he said, tone as though he were discussing some of the kitchen's cooks, "the one that will be deciding if you leave this place alive. I would suggest not interrupting me further."

/ _Let her grow frustrated,_ / he thought, remembering something the current Second Admiral had said to him once. / _Let her build her own urgency, until she wants to grab me by the shoulders and scream whatever is on her mind. There will be no doubts..._ /

"Maybe that doesn't matter to me any more." came that quiet, serious voice from next to him, "There isn't much left to live for in this world..."

Ramirez started, narrowing his eyes at the woman, who was now peering into the dining room as though suddenly interested in the large wooden table and the smooth wooden chairs. Nothing much left to live for in this world? What sort of foolish talk was this? Ridiculous, the woman was simply being weak-hearted... or perhaps trying to garner his sympathy.

"Have it your way, then." he said, annoyed, "but the tour continues regardless. The main kitchen has four ovens and ventilation straight out the top of the palace--much like the hole in the throne room. Not much for a headquarters, compared to others in Arcadia, but we do not entertain many... guests... and the barracks has its own kitchen closer for convenience."

"Right--"

"Moving on." the Silvite interjected coldly before she could say more, leading her further along the wide, rounded corridor, "That is the entrance to the Bluheim Hall, there--which also leads straight back to the throne room."

"Wouldn't all of these inward-pointing corridors be bad, strategically?" finally, a relevant question.

"No, each hall is magically trapped--if an alarm is sprung, they will activate." at which point the only way in or out would be the old teleport pads within the tower, which very few knew about. But even if one knew about the way in... when one has a Gigas at their disposal, such means were worse than foolish. Many men and women had tried to kill Lord Galcian--trying to be 'heroes'...

They had all died, their lifeless bodies flung into deep sky. And just as well, it saved the Soltisian Armada from hunting them down. Chasing elusive threats was such a hassle--even these days--but old enemies were tracked down and eradicated regardless. The skies were at the new Armada's complete disposal--all transport was done by them, or those they authorized.

There were no merchants nor fishers, and no one had seen a single Air Pirate since Lord Galcian had asked Ramirez to... deal with the problem personally.

"On the other side of this wall is the top level of Lord Galcian's quarters, you cannot reach them from the palace." he gestured at the wall as they moved along, heading for the near Recumen Hall entrance and then past it. Ramirez had come full circle, now, as this was the hall from which he had been about to exit into the outer areas when the soldier had stopped him earlier.

Well, he hadn't been in a hurry to go sit in his quarters and wait anyway. Ramirez had actually been consciously taking the long route, rather than using the teleport pads inside Soltis Tower as he would normally. Not that it mattered, when his Lord called for him, he went straight to him without hesitation and did as he was asked without pause or regret.

He was like a machine, or perhaps more like a very well-trained pet. Even this fact did not make him bitter, so far into loyalty had the Silvite fallen over these long years.

"This is one of the two primary gardens." said the Admiral, pausing beside another set of double doors. These were closed, and Ramirez reached out to open them. It was ironic, in its own way, that one of the two main gardens was located in the span between the Recumen and Plergoth Halls... fire and ice. Still, despite the less than good omen for the plant life, the garden did quite well.

Lord Galcian, to be honest, had little use for gardens or irony-tinted Hall names... but he had allowed--asked even--for Ramirez to name these corridors for reference purposes and to do something with the areas that now grew with plant life. The Silvite had not been the one to design or plant the garden rooms, with their glass ceilings and inner wall, nor did he do anything in the way of their maintenance.

But he had been the one to ask for them when his Lord had told him to find some use for the area. At least his use was good for the morale of the other officers and stationed soldiers of the palace, as any could access them unhindered when off duty.

Wasted space was not to be tolerated in the palace, and while gardens were fairly wasteful in so far as basic practicality, they were still much better than empty floors. Ramirez had been assigned other areas of the palace as well, in lower levels, which he had in turn made into more functional rooms such as officer's quarters and drilling halls. Ramirez had not enjoyed any of this, as he had not and did not believe his use to his Lord was for any sort of ability with design... but Lord Galcian had seemed pleased regardless.

And that was all that mattered, wasn't it?

The Silvite sighed, lightly, and gestured Lena through the doors. There were benches in the garden, he'd finally have her say whatever it was she kept trying to force on him. After all, he was supposed to evaluate her loyalty, or lack thereof. Though he naturally did not question Lord Galcian's decision to allow her into the palace, he certainly held little trust in the stranger's trustworthiness. Instincts were something the Silvite warrior never ignored.

Lena, predictably, took a seat on one bench when he stopped walking. She watched her guide turn and send the following guards back out before dropping her gaze to the floor. Ramirez, on the other hand, remained standing... staring down at her with a somewhat sour cast to his pale features. The two went on like this for several long moments, Lena fidgeting under the Admiral's steady gaze, but keeping hers down. Finally, Ramirez decided to break the quiet entirely and get to the point.

"Well?" he asked, tone sharp.

"I..." and she faltered, frustratingly, to a stop. Ramirez resisted folding his arms in impatience, but only just so--and only because he knew it would simply delay her longer. If she turned out to be incredibly stupid, already, then there was no need to continue the tour... he'd have her figured and be back to the throne room to give a full report much sooner than expected.

The Silvite was thorough in all things his Lord asked him to do, but at the same time, he liked being ahead of schedule. Lord Galcian valued timeliness... and therefore so did he. His Lord's standards were higher than Ramirez could ever hope to accomplish, in his own eyes, but...

But... he would try, in all ways, regardless. Even though he would never catch up to the horizon--he had to continue flying in order to not sink into Deep Sky.

"How can you support that... that... -_tyrant_-!" it was unexpected, startling Ramirez out of his brooding thoughts and causing him to stare blankly at the woman. Had she just... did she have the nerve to... "How? Please tell me! How can you even be around such a man!" Lena continued her outburst, standing up and finally staring directly at him.

She was cut off, abruptly, by the Silvite's hand flashing across the space between them and grabbing her vest... jerking her forward with surprising strength and forcing her to look directly into his eyes. Jade green, glittering with malice and something akin to... protectiveness... bore into her vision. He knew just what it would look like, this very same look had made seasoned veterans pale.

You simply -_never_- insulted Lord Galcian to Ramirez's face, ever. And most especially if he already felt you were likely a treasonist!

"You haven't the -_right_- to say such things!" he hissed, furious, as he flung her away from himself. Ramirez fought for control as she caught herself against the bench and--miraculously--closed the distance again herself.

"Please, Ramirez, I just want to know why... why are you letting that barbarian destroy Arcadia? He's rotting the very world right in front of your eyes and--!"

She stopped, suddenly, and that halt was probably the wisest decision Lena had made during this entire event. Without a sound, without a single indication of where it had come from, the Admiral's jagged silver blade had appeared at her throat, the edge biting in until she backed away. And back away she did, until the backs of her legs hit the bench and she sat down abruptly, staring up the length of the sword kept trained on her. The tip mere inches from her nose.

Ramirez was clearly fighting himself, though his hand didn't so much as shake. His eyes were narrow with rage, his free hand was clenched as though something in it pained him. Every breath he took, Lena almost expected the weapon to lunge forward, plunge into her skull...

"Lock this woman up!" the Admiral yelled, suddenly, and the guards rushed in as he lowered his sword.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	3. entry 03 :: of hourglasses and chairs

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 04.21.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 03: of hourglasses and chairs )

"Hey, who's the new guy?"

A head was jerked his direction.

"Dunno, he just kinda wandered in about a week ago."

"Huh."

The man in question swiped an errant lock of silky black hair out of his face, taking a moment to tuck it behind his ear before he continued working. Assembly line, in the new order you had to work to earn your rations, especially if you happened to live in a city that was not favored. The city of Esperanza, rebel-infested rat hole that it was, was put under some of the more intensive lines of work.

"Wonder why anyone would choose to move here anymore."

"Dunno, guy must have an interesting story though, to wind up here. No one comes here because they want to anymore, unless they're..."

"Maybe so, but I don't like him."

A chuckle from further yet along the line.

"Yeh jus don like 'um cause yer wife wus eyeballin' de poor fella yes'erday!"

"No, he just gives me the creeps. Look at him--when I first saw his face I thought a new woman had moved to town!"

The dark-haired stranger's hand tightened on his worn screwdriver--pale knuckles going white--as the commentary continued. He said nothing, however, not even when the discussion took a more insulting turn.

"Mehbe he's one of thems thet likes de -_men_-."

"Ah lay off, you're just jealous 'cause he's prettier than your girl."

Laughter, which was quickly stifled as a soldier walked down the line, eyeing the job each worker was doing in turn.

"You're new, as of last week." said the soldier, stopping next to the dark-haired man and watching him a moment. The young man nodded, silently, and continued working--wondering idly why it had taken the soldier a week to comment if it was indeed comment-worthy.

"What's your name then?"

"James." came the quiet voice. A while longer passed, the guard's eyes boring into his back as James set down his screwdriver and lifted the heavy lid to the object he was building. The steel was sharp on the edges of the half-drum construct... and he had to be careful where he grasped.

Feeling slightly over-balanced, he set the lid in place and proceeded to pop the hinge pins into the aligned slots with already-practiced ease. The soldier continued to stare with narrowed eyes, his focus more on James' hands than anything else. Specifically the strong, callused fingers on his right hand.

"What did you do before coming here, then?" the suspicious soldier questioned, finally, eyeing the obviously advanced sword calluses. Piracy was dealt with by death, and it was clear that the young man was not in the military even though he moved with professionalism. Few else had a use for knowing how to wield a sword--and while James carried no such weapon, it was clear that the calluses had not faded over any time.

"I was a bounty hunter." the worker replied, in that same quiet voice, and carefully opened the lid up by the front edge to insert the wire through the inner ends of the pins. This would keep them from coming back out and sending the heavy lid crashing as it moved down the line. "Until just recently, I hunted pirates for my ration chits."

Bounty hunters were perfectly legal, so long as they answered to the new order--and only to the new order. Most of the hunters had become soldiers, and very few new ones had sprung up without the promise of gold to tempt them.

"Right, a bounty hunter." the soldier repeated distrustfully, watched him for a few more moments before finally moving on. James ignored the man's behavior and continued working steadily, re-checking the bolts and screws to make sure they were tight. Finally, he sent his 'portable cooking stove' down the line on its caster wheels and turned to take the next from up the line.

"End of the day, finish up!" came the call, and it wasn't long before the entire factory full of workers were in line accepting their ration chits and then going home to their houses. Or--as in most of their cases--government assigned housing. James did the same, managing to leave fairly early for the size of the line, and he took the route for home that he always did.

But this time he found he wasn't alone.

"Hey, new guy!" came the shout, and the former bounty hunter paused at the call--waiting as one from the same group who had been loudly discussing him caught up.

"'Lo, I'm Ben." said the stranger as he reached him, grinning. This was the one that had told the others to lay off. James nodded politely and took his proffered hand, turning it when something just under the worn overall cuff caught his eye.

"Interesting tattoo." James remarked coldly, nodding to the back of Ben's right wrist before letting go.

"Yeah, thanks--I just like hourglasses. It's from before... you know." Ben rubbed the back of his wrist before quickly changing the subject, "Say, you have sword calluses! Are you any good?"

"I... suppose."

"Think you'd be willing to teach me some moves?" Ben asked, grinning. James, meanwhile, took a moment to analyze the other worker.

The man in question had messy brown hair and red-brown eyes... James figured he was likely a few years younger then himself, at perhaps nineteen or twenty. He'd have been a young teenager when the new order had come about--at which point sword lessons outside of the military had become unnecessary. Not illegal, so far, but unnecessary.

Interesting, then, that the younger man had some small sword-placed calluses of his own. Self taught, or maybe a mentor? Learning the use of a sword had never been banned, because sometimes future soldiers learned their swordsmanship from retired soldiers or family members. Perhaps Ben was one of those.

"...Perhaps." James finally answered, well aware that his long pause had begun to make his companion fidget nervously.

"Awesome! Hey, this is awkward timing--but do you want to come to the bar with me?"

"The... bar?" Selling things -_was_- illegal in the new order, including loqua and... services.

"Yeah, there's only water there... but it's a good place to chat anyway."

"To chat."

"Are you going to stop repeating me and just answer already?" Ben verbally prodded, grinning roguishly.

"...Yes."

"To the talk or to--"

"I'll go with you to the bar," James sighed, clearly quite irritated, "lead the way."

"I see, so that was her goal then, as I expected." Lord Galcian's voice echoed slightly in the room, easily reaching Ramirez, who waited silently from where he knelt before the throne dias. His report had been given in painstaking detail, as was only to be expected.

The woman--Lena--had dared to shout things as she'd been led away, some of which he had even thought himself on occasion... but had always quickly stifled. Mostly the question of what use was he to his Lord, just standing at his side from day to day, watching the proceedings as though he were the Lord instead of the servant.

"And so? What are your thoughts on this, Ramirez?"

"I..." he took a deep breath and continued staring at the floor, his head bowed respectfully, "While the rest of what the woman said was utter lunacy, I agree that I am not serving you acceptably while waiting idly in the palace, Lord Galcian." the Silvite swallowed, his throat dry.

"Hmm." the older man sounded as though he'd expected as much, and Ramirez dared to glance up, briefly. There was a calculating gleam present in the older man's eyes, which only punctuated his lack of surprise. Lord Galcian always seemed to know what cards were in everyone else's hand, so to speak, and it didn't surprise the Silvite at all if he had known his frustration from the start.

Ramirez cast his eyes back to the floor, reminded thoroughly of why he followed this man, and this man only.

"Well then," the most powerful man in the world said, finally, "as you are volunteering... I do have a mission for you."

"Woah, wait a second." Ben stopped as another man ran up to them, at the entrance to the so-called bar. James stopped as well, his hand on the rough-hewn plank door as he tried to hear what the new stranger said in a hurried whisper to his companion. Unfortunately, it was drowned completely out by the steady supply of voices just inside the building.

"Er, go on in there James--" said the friendly assembly worker with a small push to his back, and through the door the ex-bounty hunter staggered. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was vaguely surprised at how easily the door had opened, but he shoved it from his thoughts. "--and I'll be right in!"

There was a tiny lull in conversation near the door as a few looked up to see if he was of import. But, upon finding just another faceless stranger, the room surged back into full force bantering and muttering. James immediately moved away from the entrance, finding the brief scrutiny unnerving, and sat down at the first empty table he could find.

The furniture in this place was odd, there were chairs everywhere--some not even associated with tables, and one had to wind though them to get anywhere. The chairs themselves ranged from short stools to high-backed affairs with the tops of their backs nearly at James' eye level when standing. It made for an interesting forest of furniture when one was seated, as he discovered shortly.

"--the kids doing?" "Eh... they're alright I guess. Lori's worried about our youngest though--"

James lifted the glass of water someone poured for him and sipped, listening in on the snippets of conversation that drifted his way from all directions.

"--they need to up the rations, is what they need to do. Jon and Lori can't even feed their own kids these days and they both work at the plant full time!" "They're afraid we'll start using them as currency, you know that." "Well soon they won't have to worry about it will they? We're dropping in the streets--"

James frowned, trying to tune out the ration-related conversations on one end of the room, but his attention kept drifting back as though drawn in.

The pause was lengthy. Ramirez felt as though he could reach out a gloved hand and touch the very tension in the air around him as he waited for his Lord to continue. A mission? Just now, after this... interview with the traitor woman? Was Lord Galcian toying with him now?

"Yes, a mission. Esperanza, do you know of it?"

"Yes, Lord Galcian--it is the Dark Rift town."

"Correct, do you know its current state?"

"Yes, most of its original inhabitants were executed as air pirates, Lord Galcian, and since then it has become a... refugee city and doubled in size. Our military's control over the city is feeble, but the situation has not called for further action yet."

Lord Galcian watched the Silvite for another long, ponderous moment. Ramirez could feel the other man's eyes boring into the top of his bowed head.

"Ramirez, you are the most trustworthy of my Armada... and you are the only one who's judgement I would trust as my own. Do not think I would assign you this out of pity for your... frustration."

"Sir." Ramirez replied as needed, feeling immediately guilty for ever doubting.

"I need you to go to Esperanza. We will discuss the details before you leave."

"Yes, Lord Galcian."

"--don't know what to do anymore, the government has been watching my house--" "--shh!" "I haven't done anything though! It's that damn group running around at night!" "I know--"

"--Lori isn't looking too good herself lately, I keep trying to convince her to eat more but she refuses to..."

"--I just don't know what use all those portable stoves are, I don't know anyone who has one but we keep building them over at the factory--"

"--Lori and I give them all of our rations, we only use enough to keep going ourselves... I just wish we hadn't had so many children before the Change came about--"

Someone drew near the dark-haired man, but he didn't notice, taking another sip of his water. His focus was spread out, snippets from conversations all over the tightly-packed room reaching his ears as he picked one voice out and then another from the mass. This was apparently a well-known establishment to have so many show up directly after the day shift.

"Well now..." the nearby voice interrupted his eavesdropping, as well as did the arm curling around his shoulders--startling him into spilling some of his water as he came back to himself, "ain't -_you_- a pretty one."

James sat still in shock for a moment as the large man settled in the chair next to him. Right... next to him. Then sense took over and he moved to shove the beefy arm off of his shoulders.

"Excuse me?"

"Kind 'o flat in the chest--but I ain't picky." the hand gripped the shoulder it was resting on as its match suddenly grasped James' chin and turned the ex hunter's head towards a flushed, dirty face and breath that smelled of alcohol.

"I'm not a woman."

"Sur you ain't. Bet I could make you one, eh?" and the large drunk guffawed loudly at his comment. No one in the room seemed to be willing to stop him--though several eyes were on the situation and conversation had pretty much died all around the room. The silence that descended was deafening compared to the rumbling chatter of before.

"Get your hands off of me." James' quiet voice held a deadly tone, as he calmly set down his water glass. Unfortunately it was utterly lost on the drunk, who stood back up--shakily--and proceeded to lift an again-shocked James over his shoulder like a sack of grain.

"What the -_hell_- do you think you're doing?" the ex bounty hunter put both hands on the broad back of his captor and shoved, trying to get out of the drunk's surprisingly-firm grip. Oh, for a sword in this situation! James would have made use of a butter knife if he'd had one on him at this point...

He snagged a chair in passing, one of the high-backed sort that was the only kind tall enough for him to reach from this position. The drunk began stomping for the exit, no one moving to stop him and not many even watching any further.

"C'mon girly, I'm gonna make a woman outta you--" James twisted his back up and to the side--bringing the solid bit of furniture across the back of his captor's head with both hands in a satisfying crack of splintering wood.

The world lurched, the resourceful ex hunter squirmed free of the beefy arm's loosening grasp just before impact. He still landed on his face, ungraceful and quite painful, but it was much better than the alternative of being landed on by the now-unconscious drunk. Blood sprayed from his nose immediately after impact, and James hurriedly pulled a cloth from his factory issue overalls to press to it even before he scrambled to his feet.

No one else had moved an inch, they just stared at him as he glared at all of them from over a wad of rapidly-darkening cloth. None of them looked surprised, none of them...

"Oh -_hells_-." Ben's voice drifted from the just-opened plank door, before he hurried over. "I see you've met Todd..."

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	4. entry 04 :: the escape of a pawn

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 06.05.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 04: the escape of a pawn )

"Lord Ramirez," he bowed low when the door to the rather desolate, sterile quarters was opened by the silver-haired man in question. The courier saluted the Admiral of the old order accordingly with his right fist to his left shoulder, before straightening and holding out an envelope.

Ramirez accepted it with a silent nod, and once the courier had turned to leave he shut the door firmly. These would be his instructions, in more... specific detail than Lord Galcian had seen fit to speak aloud where he could be potentially overheard. No one was to know the details of his mission save himself and his Lord... not even the other officers and Admirals.

The Silvite split the seal carefully and removed the parchment that was nearly covered in Lord Galcian's angular, strong handwriting. He read it carefully, several times over, before igniting it with a whispered spell and letting it drop to the marble floor to curl in upon itself and become ash.

He had preparations of his own to complete, for this visit to Esperanza would be no easy task.

"What--" James' voice was clipped, as cold as the grave, "is wrong with these people!"

His accusing stare seared into all onlookers in his sight over Ben's shoulder, but they didn't look very concerned. Most had already gone back to concentrating on their water and conversations, although there was a tension now, as though they thought he was about to grab more furniture and start hurling it at them.

/ _And not a bad idea, that!_ / the furious young man thought, the hand not holding his handkerchief to his nose clenching into a pale-knuckled fist.

"Now James--"

"He was going to... to... -_rape_- me." he continued, voice forcibly calmer, turning his attention to the younger factory worker for the moment, "And not a single one of those... bastards... was going to stop him."

"I know, I know. Come on, we should leave--" but Ben's words were wasted, for James had already shoved past him--knocking several stools over in the process--and was heading for the door. The younger man immediately moved to catch up, and only just managed to reach the feminine-looking bounty hunter as he shoved open the plank door.

Not to say that James had ran, no. He was currently employing a ground-eating kind of a walk, which was fast enough that Ben had to jog every few steps to keep up as they moved down the darkening street.

"Hey James--slow down there, man, this is really awkward." the pace was right between jogging and walking, and the brown-haired worker kept having to alternate between the two, not having the long legs his coworker did. James said nothing in return, but did--grudgingly--slow down to a normal paced walk.

"Thanks. Listen--about back in the bar--"

"Worthless, disgusting, waste of air--the lot of them."

"Hey, it's not their fault--" but apparently that was the wrong stance to take on the recent events, for James suddenly whirled on one foot and grabbed Ben's factory-issued jumpsuit, shoving him into the near building's wall with a shocking amount of strength. Ben choked... but later he wouldn't have been able to tell anyone whether the tight sensation in his throat was from the callused hand latched there now--

--Or from the -_look_- of pure, smoldering hatred burning in his companion's expression not a foot from his face.

"It -_is_- their fault, you fool! What excuse could they possibly have for just... sitting there... as though nothing in the world was going on? They didn't even look surprised!"

"They weren't surprised." Ben managed to croak out, and he was relieved when James released him and stepped back, bloodstained wad of handkerchief lying forgotten on the ground between them--dried blood caked on his nose and upper lip under those piercing eyes.

"Listen," he continued bravely, pushing slightly away from the wall to stand normally, "let's talk about this at my place--alright? This is no place to discuss these things, and besides... you look like shit." a pause, nervous tension, before Ben broke out into a grin.

James blinked.

"There, see? You're calming down a little--that's a good thing." his grin turned a little less tense, before he stooped to retrieve the wad of cloth on the ground and held it out to the black-haired man who was--apparently--in a little shock.

"Come on then, I don't live far from here."

"I--" James flexed his hands at his side, curling and uncurling them in the pause, "...fine."

"Lord Ramirez!" he jumped slightly, surprised by the sudden pounding at his door and urgency in the voice. The silver-haired man set down the ink pot he had just opened and turned back to the door, pushing it open again with one hand. The other flitted to rest on the pommel of his sword, ever the cautious one. "Sir, the prisoner from earlier--she's gone!"

"Inform Lord Galcian at once." he ordered calmly, stepping through the door and past the guard who had reported, quickly heading for the nearest Gigas-named hall to the old tower.

Ramirez could set a quick walk when he needed to, getting from point A to point B quickly without seeming rushed. So it wasn't long at all before he'd stepped into the old tower and onto a downward-linked teleport pad. If the prisoner was indeed already gone, then there was no need to run.

Ben was, as he told James on the way to his apartment, not a 'native' to Esperanza.

"--so I drifted over after the big change," he explained as they began climbing the somewhat rusted metal staircase, "with my older brother, Wren."

This stairway was only one of many zig-zagging up the side of the government-assigned housing building complex. It was a huge construction, housing more than half the citizens of the town that had tripled in size--and it made one think more of rats packed tightly into a box than any sort of real 'housing'.

It was something Lower Valua might have had, in the old days, were it not that it would have taken organization to accomplish. Organization that, James felt as his hand gripped the rust-flaked railing... the previous government would have never thought to use in the lower city.

"We, ah, came over in the hope of finding 'decent work'. Or rather, that's why he came--I just tagged along." Ben paused, glancing back as though to make sure James was still with him. Apparently an answer was in order.

"Ah." surprisingly, that seemed to work well enough, because Ben grinned and then continued climbing.

"Speaking of reasons, there's quite a bit of debate about you in the plant, you know." the cheerful voice drifted back, clearly fishing for information. The man in question frowned slightly, not appreciating the digging into his reasoning, especially while he still felt like going back to the bar and casting Pyri on some of that nice dry wooden furniture.

...Preferably with all the exits firmly blocked off.

"We're here to talk about the bar." James replied after another glance from Ben, as they continued to climb. The younger man apparently lived pretty far up the complex...

"Er, yeah, I suppose you..." Another glance, James' frown deepened.

"If you are not going to explain why you... think... those--" a pause, he chose a word, "-_things_- had reason, then I will leave now."

"No, no, I'll explain--just a minute." they had apparently made it to Ben's assigned living area, because he pushed the door open and walked in, gesturing for James to follow, "I just don't like talking about the people here when I'm sure to be overheard." the younger man explained after he'd shut the door behind James, who took a moment to look around.

It didn't quite take a moment. Ben's living area was just like James', except that James was in a much smaller complex built nearer to the factory. A single room with a partition curtain cutting off the far end of the rather narrow area. The hidden area would be the restroom. There was a narrow bedroll jammed against the wall to the side, and a small military-issued lamp sitting next to it.

Two chairs sat nearer the door, with the one thing between them that was not from the military.

A chess board and pieces, built into a small table. White was losing terribly in this game--down to only a knight, a bishop, and a pawn besides the king... and the pawn was currently "tied" with an opposing one. rendered null for the time being. Black meanwhile had two bishops, a knight, a rook, and two pawns... only one null and the other only a few spaces from becoming a queen.

"You're new around here, so you haven't changed yet." Ben said, pulling one of the chairs out to sit in, the one on the black side. James remained standing, however, and silent for the time being.

"In fact, if I didn't know it was impossible, I'd say you haven't even been living around other people since the change." a shrug, "but that's beside the point. The fact is, James, people just can't afford to care anymore."

"..." the dark-haired man pulled the other chair away from the board and sat down, grudgingly, before he silently gestured for him to continue.

"The energy that caring takes has been thoroughly, methodically wrung out of people. Before the change... you would have had at least half the bar--or at the very least the owner--there to knock a chair over his head instead." Ben shrugged, "Now they're all convinced that people like Todd are just a normal part of life, and so long as his kind doesn't mess with -_them_-... well, what's a newcomer worth to them anyway?"

He ran his tattooed hand through his hair, clearly at least slightly nervous under James' silent stare.

"And at any rate, Todd has friends in the military, and no one here wants the military breathing down their necks. We've all seen that before, I'm sure you will soon as well--though I hope to hells it isn't you they come after. No, maybe we'll be lucky and that sorry bastard will have been too drunk to remember you specifically."

"So what you're saying is, they've all become... jaded." James finally offered, calming down further yet through strict use of willpower alone.

"Exactly. The change changed more than the laws and work; it changed the people over the last few years too. Todd himself was one of the most upstanding, law-abiding citizens of Sailor's Isle before things happened... he was a baker--you know--the sort you could leave your kids with for an hour or two while you rented a fishing boat and caught some extra food." Ben shrugged, "He used to have them help sweep his place out, and in return he loaded them up with more pastries then they could quite handle themselves."

"And now he's..."

"Yep, a swaggering bastard who leans heavily on his loqua and military buddies for backup. They're all changing like that... slowly going from outrage to indifference, and from indifference to... something else. It's kind of funny, too, in an ironic way--those military buddies of his are who supply him with his loqua... it's almost like they prefer him stomping around drunk, causing problems for them to jump into."

James was silent for a long, thoughtful moment, folding his hands carefully on the chessboard tabletop between them. He was careful not to disturb the pieces, however, and eyed them critically a while.

"Whose turn is it?" the darker-haired man finally asked, after the silence had stretched until the tension radiating from Ben was nearly solid. He had finally calmed back down legitimately, indeed... his mind had shifted modes with the new information. It would digest things, without him necessarily prodding it along consciously... and meanwhile, he'd just let it do so.

"Um, white's actually--" Ben's startled reply was cut off by James removing his hands from the board and lifting one white piece, moving it only three squares with the air of someone who had long since planned his move.

And so the game began, or perhaps--considering the state of the board--it simply continued with a change of cast.

He'd known from the start that the "Lena" girl would be trouble.

"This is the cell she was in?" Ramirez asked coldly, gesturing to the still-locked door of the small room. There were no holes, no signs of tampering, and no signs of unlocking, either. Through the small slit of a window one could see that the room was empty... with no place to hide... but that was all.

"Yes, s-sir." the guard gulped, for it would take a blind, deaf, and stupid man to not know that he was potentially in Very Deep Shit...

But he simply gestured to be allowed into the cell, and the guard hurried to comply.

"Lock the door behind me, and do not unlock it until I specifically tell you to." Ramirez said, frowning in thought, "There is something wrong with this cell, if she escaped without tampering with the door."

And so the Silvite spent the next several hours, patiently moving from one end of the cell to the other--going over every possibility in his head until he finally had to give up. He had no idea how the escape was managed, the only two holes in the entire narrow room was the door and the air vent above... but even had she managed to--somehow--reach the air vent and pry it open...

It went straight up for five feet and then ended entirely, the actual air was pushed into the 'air vent' itself through countless finger-sized pipes in the side of the vent's chamber. Any of these pipes could be redirected to pump anything else into the room, though, from sedating gases to several less pleasant things. Often, executions were done in these cells... for Lord Galcian had no use for the public executions of old Valua.

...There was absolutely no sign that this cell had even been -used- recently, Ramirez--frustrated--decided that he simply couldn't concentrate because he had other things to be doing at the moment. The mission was, after all, far more important than one rebel (somehow) prolonging the inevitable.

"Keep this cell locked and under guard." he ordered on his way out.

"Check-mate." the array of pieces to either side of the board had changed drastically over the course of the game. James had freed his pawn and made it a queen, having successfully killed Ben's pawns off and guarded his own singular one at the same time. Ben gaped.

"How did you--"

"You're too easily distracted," James said, sitting back in his chair with his hands once again folded- the fingers laced on the edge of the table again. "When I began showing all my interest in the pawns, you did too--and virtually forgot about the King. Meanwhile, I used him to help box you in... the King moves slow, but he is still quite useful tactically."

Ben looked dumbfounded a moment, then exploded into a long and genuine laugh. The newcomer had certainly taught him a thing or two! James, in turn, couldn't help but at least smile. A smile, though, such a rare occurrence with the young man that it startled him, for he couldn't remember the last time he'd...

"...I should go." he said abruptly, suddenly back to business in manner and tone--standing from his chair and stiffly easing it back under the desk out of the way.

"Are you sure? It's not late yet, is it?" the younger man looked a little wounded as he too stood, and pushed his chair in.

"We played for over an hour."

"I--"

James raised one inky-black eyebrow--his cold expression making Ben snap his mouth shut on whatever he had originally thought to say.

"Well alright then... see you at the factory tomorrow, ok?"

"I'm certain." and with that, James left, nearly slamming the door behind him. His jaw was firmly clenched shut as he began the trek down the sets of rusted stairways; his sword-callused hand catching slightly on the rail's peeling surface.

He had... a lot to think over.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	5. entry 05 :: wretched hope

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 06.18.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 05: wretched hope )

Years ago... so far back that it seemed to the ones who remembered as though it had been a life time, Valua had owned Esperanza. The "city of hope". Sailors from all over the known world had drifted in occasionally to try their own luck at going East, and the ones who were not killed in the attempt were often infected with the disease--the plague that the small town carried in surplus.

Despair. Thus Esperanza grew from a tiny military outpost, into a small city.

Upon finding that they could not break through the dark rift themselves... Valua eventually abandoned Esperanza, leaving behind its residents. The city of hope had become the city of the hopeless, being tossed aside like rubbish only put a firm seal upon the people's dejection.

Years went by, no one kept track how many. Five? Ten? It did not matter... long enough for one of the drifters--an orphan of the rift--to grow from young child to young woman. But how long had it been before even she and her parents had wandered in?

Then, one fateful day, a new group of travelers entered the town, their ship was large and sleek, purple and silver. A single lifeboat was released, and onto the dock stepped four young strangers. An airsick Prince, two Pirates, and a girl in white.

Oh how the citizens of Esperanza had laughed when the leader of the four had proclaimed that they would break through the rift! So many had tried, so many of such skill! What fools were these, to think they would succeed where so many had failed?

But the city of hope was in for a surprise, for--somehow--they did make it.

Perhaps there was real hope to be found in Esperanza after all? The people took on a new liveliness--sailors having long since tied themselves to the dirt took to the skies again. The people began to walk with a purpose other than to simply wait for death. Chins were raised, eyes brightened, and then...

...and then...

It was like a child's summer dream come to an abrupt halt, a ship crumbling slowly as it arched downwards into Deep Sky...

The change. No one really knew how it had happened.

The Grand Admiral of the former Valuan Empire had... taken over the world. He crushed Valua without launching a single ship, he sent the feared Ramirez to exterminate Pirates both black and blue like vermin... the world knelt...

No one knew for sure what had happened to the young Pirates and their friends, but everyone felt in their guts that they had been the first to fall.

Seemingly-forgotten until this point, Esperanza suddenly found its port overfull with ships of all sizes and descriptions, refugees from other cities under every moon. And behind them like a horrible rift of another kind--the new Armada. It was the peoples' own homelands' ships... their own people aboard them... herding them like cattle into the only place depressing enough to break them near-effortlessly.

Hope, they'd named it. What a terrible thing...

For a long time, the Armada had patrolled the ways out of the city--keeping everyone bottled in. Esperanza began to build new homes, but could not build enough with their limited supplies, the city had grown to five times its size over night. The high, rusted walls seemed to strain from all the people huddled fearfully inside.

And then... the food began to run out.

Children cried, mothers wept, and bodies soon began plummeting off the land. Most were dead, thrown off with whispered words of closure.

Some were alive, driven mad by hunger, thirst, and despair--they leapt from the walls of their own accord... screaming curses at the Armada as they fell.

It was only a few days after the food had run out entirely, when the numbers had dwindled down to only three times their original size, that -_he_- had arrived by lifeboat, flanked by two elite soldiers. He was easily recognizable, the crisp Valuan uniform and silver-white hair--the cold green eyes. Lord Admiral Ramirez had become quite the legend himself, even in this city that heard so little from the outside world.

For what was whispered about Ramirez was simply death. He was death, he was the grim reaper... any who opposed him died--for he was the very hand of Lord Galcian himself.

"You people are being taught a lesson." he had said coldly, standing just inside the gates of the city--for no one had bothered to close them, "The same lesson as the rest of your wretched world. The sooner you learn, the sooner things will be better for you."

And with that he had turned and left them, without another word or a flicker of eyelash, presumably to go back to hunting down elusive Pirates. The citizens--both new and old--took a deep collective breath... and then choked.

For something near a dozen large ships had broken away from their patrol and were approaching steadily, their flags--blank and blood red of the new Armada--were up. Before the town had time to fully panic, expecting attack, the first of the ships had disembarked and soldiers had landed.

The cargo of these ships were rations and building supplies, and the soldiers quickly set to making the population work for those rations--building housing complexes that rose above the walls. Factories and jails, the city soon spilled over the walls and up the cliffs. But no one even noticed.

After all, the danger was already inside.

Years went by, the populace trying desperately to fall into a rhythm with which to live by. Buying and selling was forbidden, as was resisting the military. Soon the executions of the more rebellious citizens--members of 'The Sands'--began to become commonplace... making up for the steady trickle of newcomers. For Esperanza was the only city one could travel to without strict government approval... you had only to approach a new-order cargo ship and ask to go there. But the well-known catch was that you could never travel back out again.

Lord Galcian did not mind killing the weak, but he had realized that to destroy all of them would be a waste of a potential resource. So, he would break those who survived. And he succeeded, for the most part, except for that one rebel group that kept cropping up. Small enough that he had not yet bothered to crush them, but just devious enough to ensure that the military did not have a complete grasp on the town.

The Sands, so named for the hourglass that was their symbol.

James scowled at the 'grill' (as they had come to start calling the blasted 'portable stoves'), and took a moment to swipe his hair out of his eyes again. He could pause here and there because he worked faster than those up the line from him, and so the ex bounty-hunter took the moment to straighten and look around.

Today, it was whispered, the factory was going to be inspected. This was a big deal, he knew, because if the factory did not pass these inspections, the work was only going to get worse and the flow of ration chits would slow down as further punishment.

So he didn't take as long of a pause as he could have, before setting back to work. This morning he had been moved up the line, where his 'dexterity and attitude would come to more use', according to the soldier who had questioned him only a day before.

Patience and luck, was more like what one needed here. He was putting the sides, back, and extremely heavy main cooking piece (which was assembled yet further up the line) together. James also installed the caster wheels and doors--which meant the cross piece that held the tops of the doors down as well.

Which would not have been all that difficult, except that he was continually getting the wrong parts, not enough of one thing--broken and smashed of another--and the holes Never Lined Up. The steel was not forgiving, either, when it would slip and fall onto his foot. And the soldier smirked every time he heard the clang of steel bouncing off of James' boot and onto the stone floor.

The dark-haired man fought against one particular side panel that seemed to refuse to cooperate under any circumstances... and he finally got the bolt through the correct slots and tightened the nut down on the other side. Now he only had to do that on three other spots on the same side plate...

Patience and luck, but mostly the former. A good thing for James that he had more self-control than to curse or mutter...

The ex hunter continued to work, as silent as always, as a group of military men walked past. James didn't even flinch, or jump when he caught a glimpse of a young-looking officer with blond hair out of the corner of his eye. The rest of the plant seemed to take notice, however, when the young man in question--silently and without explanation--smoothly decapitated one of the workers with a flash of steel.

The body slumped forward, a screwdriver dropping from one hand... and a dagger with an hourglass-shaped pommel dropping from the other.

"This plant," the blond man said, roughly shoving the body of the would-be assassin off of the portable stove, "has just failed its inspection."

He was certain that he made an odd sight, sitting on the edge of one of Esperanza's high, rusted walls, his knees drawn up, arms resting atop them and his sharp chin digging into them. His eyes, half-hidden by his dark hair, were mostly unfocused--staring out over the top of the harbor and at the dark rift.

How many people of Esperanza had done the same over the years? James did not know, and felt--with conviction--that he did not particularly -_want_- to know. All at once he had realized that the city's disease had been working its way into him... through the pores of his skin like tiny, invisible roots.

It was not the dark rift he was seeing, no, splashing across his vision was the memory of only an hour previous. The soldiers had, under the direction of the blond man--(who, he reasoned, must be a high officer of some sort)--began to kill random workers. And when the officer was not looking... James watched the soldiers, with a stealth and ease of something well-practiced, loot the bodies.

The carnage itself had not made him so much as blink an eye--having expected something along the lines after an attempted assassination from The Sands. He had, however, been more expecting for everyone to be searched for a sign of the hourglass, rather than for random victims to be selected.

As for the looting, James felt more ill at that, than at the actual killing...

And, naturally, the rations for the week were cut in half for all the workers at that factory. He shook his head, having handed his own ration chit to the one called Jon... the married man with the children that had been the subject of so much talk the day before at the bar.

"Hey," the voice startled the ex bounty hunter, making him jump and snap his attention suddenly to his left--

Where Ben was currently pulling himself up off the ladder to sit next to him. James swallowed, and tried to will his adrenalin-fed heartbeat to slow back down. He was admittedly jumpy after the massacre at the plant, though he had stayed carefully out of the way of the ensuing fights that had broken out over the random victim selection.

A bunch of exhausted, terrified, bone-weary factory workers, most never having fought in their lives, armed only with screwdrivers and wrenches. They hadn't been much of a challenge against armed and armored soldiers, and they, too, had been looted when the blond wasn't looking.

James felt as though he would be sick.

"I heard about what happened, and about what you did." the newcomer continued after a moment of also staring out at the rift. "That was really good of you, you know."

The darker-haired factory worker blinked, thrown briefly for a loop. Ben hadn't been at work today, but what had James done that was 'good of him'? He didn't say anything, however, and was soon rewarded with clarification.

"You know," the younger man said, "with the rations."

"I don't need as much." he replied stiffly, glaring into the rift from behind inky black locks of hair that insisted on getting into his face at all possible times.

"Yeah, well... that was still really good of you."

The two simply spent the next long few moments contemplating the rift, or at least seeming to for all outward appearances. Again, James was thinking about other things--now his attention drifted to the fact that there were no longer ships within sight. When the change had first occurred, they had always been patrolling outside the city to make sure none escaped alive.

Now there was no point, he supposed, as there were no ships left that the new Armada did not own. Besides, where would anyone go if they did escape?

Regardless, anyone who built a ship for personal use soon found their heads separated from their shoulders, as having a boat had become considered an act of piracy. The new order did not bother with public executions--the heads on public display in the nearest town square afterwards worked just as well, and there would be no miraculous escapes just before the killing stroke.

The Valuans had been stupid in that way.

"Um, James, I wanted to thank you for finishing that chess game with me yesterday." Ben broke into his morbid thoughts again, sounding awkward and a little embarrassed.

"...why? I beat you, after all."

"Yeah, well, you would have anyway." Ben chuckled nervously before elaborating hurriedly, "that was the way my brother and I left the game when I saw him last." he coughed, clearly embarrassed, "Except the side I played last night was his, and you were playing mine... so you can see how bad I was losing before."

"When you saw him last?" James repeated, raising one dark eyebrow--having immediately spotted those few words as suspect.

"Well, yeah... I told you before that I came with him on his search for 'decent work', right?" he waited for James' nod, "Well, we were going to finish that game the next day--and we both went to our beds..." the brown-haired man sighed, "and the next morning he'd vanished."

"...I see."

"Yeah, you know--first I thought maybe he'd been one of The Sands the whole time... you know... and had gone out that night and maybe gotten caught and killed. But when I went to the square that day... and his head wasn't there..."

James was silent, not sure why the younger man was telling him about this--but it reminded him again of Todd, the starving families, the soldiers looting...

The world really -_had_- gone to hell, even more so than before.

"Well, anyway, thanks for finishing that game with me--even though I lost." Ben repeated, finally staggering to a halt in his awkward story.

"You're... welcome." the ex bounty-hunter said thoughtfully, quietly, his gaze fixed again on the rift.

More time went by, whatever Ben was thinking of was a mystery to him, but he really didn't give it any attention. He was too busy hurling further into his own dark thoughts... the roots burrowed deeper and began to split... reaching for his bones...

"You remind me a lot of Wren." the other worker murmured quietly, almost too soft for James to hear. "So much that's it's almost like he's come back, every time I look at you."

Yet more silence followed, James' eyes now tracking the movement of a school of sky fish--well out of the range of nets from the city's walls. Sky fish prospered now more than ever without people out catching them. Most of the rations dealt out by the government consisted of hard trail bread, salt, and rack-dried vegetables.

Fish was something most only dreamt about these days, though those in the military were free to catch them if their duties 'happened' to take them near a school. Another thing that was used in 'friendships' like those of Todd and his military connections, where he caused trouble for them to entertain themselves with, and they gave him Loqua.

James snorted in disgust, closing his eyes. His gloved hands formed slowly into loosely-held fists.

"I know that you are one of The Sands." he said simply after a while, ignoring the alarmed gasp from the other man, "--is that... why? You wished to follow where you felt your brother might have gone?"

"I--um--uh..." Ben suddenly laughed, "you really -_are_- just like him! Moons..."

"You are clumsily trying to change the subject." he pointed out, not looking at the younger worker even though he now reopened his eyes. "Unsuccessfully, I might add."

"Well, yeah. I guess that's probably why I joined." Ben finally admitted, knowing the cat was out of the bag anyway--so to speak. James didn't seem like he was about to clamber down the ladder and report him, anyway. "But it's not why I stayed."

The older of the two nodded, as though confirming something in his mind, and then tilted his head back--stretching his neck as he looked straight up. The wind picked up, and he closed his eyes again as his hair renewed its assault on them.

And meanwhile, below them, a familiar figure swaggered off for an obvious destination. He'd heard all he needed to, and his loqua would be assured for weeks to come from -_this_- one... what marvelous luck...

"This city is stifling." James said after another long moment, "I think it would choke me, if I lived here too long."

"Yeah." Ben agreed, watching the other man with nostalgia fairly glimmering in his eyes, "but it's the closest to freedom you can find on this wretched world anymore."

James smiled bitterly at the irony of his words, a wretched world indeed. The two young men on the wall went back to contemplating the rift, like so many countless others had done from these walls before them. Esperanza, the city of Hope.

The dark-haired man wasn't sure whether to laugh... or scream.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	6. entry 06 :: snake's skin

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 06.19.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 06: snake's skin )

James was once again doing battle.

And with a most stubborn and resistant foe, far more armed--and armored--than he. A crafty, sneaky foe that few who had not indeed faced it themselves... would ever think of as one.

Yes, it was the portable stove.

It was his seventh of the day, the shift having just started only an hour ago, and so far he had been lucky. All the parts had been correct, nothing had been broken further up the line, and the holes had almost lined up. Probably out of fear from yesterday's inspection, so far everyone up the line had done their jobs correctly.

Until now.

In typical grill fashion, it was now back to patience, luck, and a -_lot_- of fumbling with the bolts. James ground his teeth, nearly wrapped around the construct as he was--with one leg propping the back panel up from falling out, he was only balanced on one foot. Both hands were occupied with trying to align the slots--the long and fully-threaded bolt was stuck behind one of his ears.

/ _Cursed things..._ / he thought/ _if I never see another after this job... it will be far too soon!_ /

Clang, **CRASH**! Replied the grill, as the back plate fell inward--away from his leg's support--and impacted loudly with the bottom.

/ _Moons damn you!_ / James suddenly became aware that he was shaking a fist at an inanimate object--face reddened with barely-contained frustration. A month ago he wouldn't have believed that a flat bit of metal could annoy him so... but he certainly knew now!

"Hey, James--man--take it easy." Ben commented from a few places down the line, "You look like you're about to start beating it up with your bare hands!"

"It's an idea!" James shot back, glaring impotently at the chunk of steel even as he lifted it back into place and started over in his efforts.

"Yeah, well, I don't think it would be worth it in the long run." a pause, then--in a devious tone... "...or perhaps it would..."

"Don't tempt me." James said, forcing calmness into his tone, and managing at the same time to shoot one bolt home. He quickly tightened the nut on the other end before the blasted thing could back out of its own accord and go skittering across the floor out of reach. It happened quite often anyway, unless one was quick to keep it from its sinister plans.

"Can't blame a guy for trying, it would be entertaining to watch--to say the least." the younger worker replied with a smirk, going back to his work.

"...Mmhmm."

But their talk was cut off abruptly, when the main door of the factory burst open.

Neither looked up at first, as the blond officer with his group of subordinates strode through the door and stopped, searching for someone along the lines. But when they finally had to look, breaking the unspoken rule to never pay any more attention to newcomers than needed...

Ben, who had not even been at the factory the previous day, reacted with surprising horror. He dropped his tools from nerveless fingers--gasping--and stared at the blond in raw shock.

James, too, stopped working--Ben's reaction sending a trickle of pure dread down his spine even as the officer locked his gaze on the younger worker and then pointed with one gloved hand.

"Execute him, he is of The Sands." said the blond, coldly, and his men rushed to obey. Ben backed away from the assembly line--his gaze never leaving the blond's cold stare. His face was as pale as a corpse's--as though gazing upon a ghost, and his hands shook as he stared.

Around them, the other workers stopped their jobs and watched as well, reminding James suddenly of the bar. The trickle of dread turned into a small stream.

"Why!" Ben finally screamed, eyes impossibly wide. James, looking on as one transfixed, felt as though the world were moving slower than it really should. As though sprinting through deep water...

"You are a traitor--a rebel--a piece of filth to be eradicated." the cold officer said bluntly, not moving from where he stood. He didn't seem to be viewing this as anything more interesting than filling out paperwork--what was a rebel's life to him?

"But why... why -_you_-?" Ben choked out as the soldiers slowly closed in. James still could only watch as the officer smiled slowly--a humorless... almost a bored expression...

"The military," he said slowly, deliberately, "pays quite well."

Ben's desperate, pleading stare shifted to James.

And James realized at that moment that the younger man was not even fearing for his life. He simply did not want to know what he had just discovered. Did not want to know with a vehemence that surpassed even the fear of dying... but not the shock of complete and utter betrayal.

Then, in a blink of an eye--a sword buried itself in Ben's back, protruding through his stomach before slowly sliding back out. He fell forward, towards James, and only managed to sputter one last word before another sword was thrust mercifully through his neck... ending his life quicker than most.

"W-Wren..."

/ _"You remind me a lot of Wren. So much that's it's almost like he's come back, every time I look at you."_

_"I know that you are one of The Sands. --is that... why? You wished to follow where you felt your brother might have gone?"_

_"I--um--uh... ...you really -_are_- just like him! Moons..."_

_"You are clumsily trying to change the subject. Unsuccessfully, I might add."_

_"Well, yeah. I guess that's probably why I joined. ...But it's not why I stayed..."_ /

"Kill that one, too." the cold voice snapped James out of his sudden memory of yesterday, and he found that he was the one in question. Ben's blood pooled on the stone floor--the cooling body was ignored entirely. But he knew that it would change when the officer, when -_Wren_-, was not looking...

The former bounty hunter had seen a lot of horrors in his life, had committed even more, and he wouldn't later be able to explain what had made this different. Why this affected him so badly... but he would suspect, always, that it was because things were supposed to have -_changed_-.

James bent reflexively, and retched.

/ _"This city is stifling. I think it would choke me, if I lived here too long."_

_"Yeah. ...But it's the closest to freedom you can find on this wretched world anymore."_ /

And he finally knew whether to scream or laugh...

He did both. He screamed, and the soldiers retreated several steps, looking to their officer in puzzlement as James' scream changed. The worker laughed so hard and loud that it immediately hurt his throat... and yet still... he kept laughing, and screaming.

He couldn't help it, couldn't have stopped it even if he'd tried... so he just let himself go until his voice had gone beyond hoarse. And even then, when he forced it down... something in him still wanted to laugh even more, and something else in him still just wanted to scream. It was as though all the air he had ever breathed in over his lifetime suddenly wanted to tear out of him.

Insanity? It was possible. Pure hysteria? More likely. Or, perhaps, it was just something long overdue in releasing, even as Esperanza's invisible roots firmly wrapped themselves around his bones and began to seek the marrow.

He was silent for a very long moments... still bent, straining to regain some control and catch his breath...

"You won't kill me," he finally croaked out of his abused vocal chords, straightening slowly, before the soldiers could regain their scattered wits and attack. "Because I know everything about The Sands--" his voice held the hint of a mad giggle even now, and he fought it down before continuing...

"...and I'm even willing to talk."

The officer's expression shifted--just slightly--and James was not at all surprised to see greed flicker there. No, after what he'd just witnessed about the officer... he wouldn't have been surprised by anything at this point.

"But only--" he continued--holding up a hand as he skillfully regained his composure, albeit with much difficulty. "But only to one man."

None of The Sands ever talked, even under plain torture, having learned how to black out at will, and clearly it was assumed that James was one of them. A valid assumption, with his claimed and ultimately un-verifiable knowledge. And even if they would take him to have the information forced from him, the only one that could manage it took orders directly from...

"And who is it that you will talk to?" Wren asked coldly, for everything about this man but his greed was coldness--harsh like Glacia.

"I will give my information only to..." he paused, thinking of his words and savoring the irony before uttering them, "...the leader of this wretched world."

And James' own cold parody of a smile played across his lips.

...even if all he wanted to do was laugh until he died.

The journey to Soltis was an uneventful one, from the bowels of a military transport ship. James was seated on a narrow bench against the hull, crates of supplies of all sorts surrounded him and his guards--for he wasn't left alone for the entire time. Four soldiers sat with him, one on either side and two on the bench across... and they looked about as unhappy to be here as he felt.

Though in James' case, it wasn't that he minded where they were going--but that he despised where they had come from. And the guards? They were more than a little uneasy about traveling to the capital, having to go near the man that controlled all.

Unlike the officer, who apparently felt it was a wonderful opportunity for promotion. James felt the laugh catch at his breathing--and he concentrated for several long moments on choking the hysteria back down. A small giggle. Why? Why indeed... why was a question he would be hearing a lot of.

...The guards looked even less at ease.

Finally, after two days of travel, they arrived. The ship glided into the harbor and was quickly tied to the shimmering white dock--gangplanks spanned the distance between ship and land... and the cargo was immediately started in on unloading. Everything was to be efficient in the new order--which was why no one was shuttled anywhere else without at least a second reason behind it. Such as a supply run.

James waited until the two guards in front of him stood before doing the same, and followed them up the stairs and across the deck, well aware of the other two guards trailing close behind. Amusingly, he wasn't sure if they were more afraid of -_him_- bolting, or of one of their own breaking for an escape.

Across the gangplank they walked, James' steps far more sure and unfaltering than the guards' as they began to head for the tower. Wren walked past them without a glance, hurrying along to pass securities and request an audience with his leader.

"You seem awfully calm." one of the guards behind him remarked as they finally reached the base of the tower, beneath the five stories of addition so far up. Pads had been set up here, but not the sort from the original Soltis. These were the kinds that Rixis boasted, so that one had to actually travel -_on_- them rather than through.

It gave one ample time to be shot down, if one was an unwelcome guest.

James craned his neck, looking up at the perfectly round rings of additional building as the pad--just big enough for all five to stand on--rose smoothly up towards the construct.

"You seem awfully nervous, considering that -_I_- am the prisoner." he finally said back, once the pad had docked on the inside of the bottom ring between tower and addition. James didn't seem to be impressed or surprised, however, much to the guards' discomfiture, because if their prisoner didn't gawk then they couldn't very well do so either.

"Here to see Lord Galcian?" an armored man asked them as they stepped off the pad.

"Yes sir, we're here with--"

"I know who you're here with." the man cut the guard off, before turning and snapping, "This way." over his shoulder. He led them up to the top floor--all efficiency--and then gestured them into one of the halls.

"This is Plergoth Hall. You'll wait in here until Lord Galcian says you can enter." the armored man said, gruffly, before turning and walking off to attend to his other duties. The guards shared a glance with one another, before leading James further down the hall.

Apparently they were just in time.

"Lord Galcian, I bring you a man from Esperanza who claims to have full details on The Sands..." James heard Wren's voice say from within the chamber, though he could not see inside, "he insisted that he would tell only you." the officer finished apologetically after a long, uncomfortable pause.

They, meanwhile, stood just on the other side of the door. The guards were looking even more nervous than before...

"Send him in." came the voice through the door, and much to the guards' surprise and dismay--their prisoner pushed past them and entered the room before they could stop him. James approached the dias even as they rushed inside behind him, and he knelt with his head bowed low, fist to shoulder in respect and flawless protocol.

Lord Galcian stared at the young man with the smallest hit of... amusement? glittering in his dark eyes. It was as though he was sharing a joke with the worker, with his crude factory-issue overalls and messy black hair.

Wren moved to say something, thought better of it, and stepped back again... jaw snapping shut.

"Well," Lord Galcian said after a long and thoughtful moment, "I see you've turned your hair black--stained with ink?"

"Yes, my Lord." James replied, not yet elaborating. His un-gloved left hand was in agony--no longer used to the dull pulsing from the creature high above. Only a month had gone by, but it was enough. The young man grit his teeth, but remained exactly as he was. The guards further tensed--not at all sure what was going on, and Wren seemed simply shocked that the two acted so...

"And no one found you out?" Lord Galcian continued after another long moment, "I -_am_- impressed, you are trickier than even I expected." he said, darkly amused, before returning to the business at hand.

"Now--stand and report; what did you find?"

The young man obediently stood up and began to tell his story, shedding as he did so the name of James like a snake's skin and settling into the mode of reporting. He would try to remain as detached as possible from 'James' while he spoke.

Ramirez, after all, had quite the disturbing tale to get through objectively.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	7. entry 07 :: deception's echo

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 07.20.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 07: deception's echo )

Ramirez managed to unfold his story in his usual efficient and crisp manner, thankful that the hysteria did not stir and awaken. It did not even come when he arrived at the point in which the blond officer next to him had slain his own brother... over personal gain. Ramirez was, after all, in the presence of Lord Galcian--and that seemed to quell even the strongest of his... less than sane moments.

Calming, was the word he found mentally. Lord Galcian had a calming effect on him--for now that his Lord knew of the full situation... everything would be fine. Right? Surely steps would be taken to eradicate this... worsening of the human nature, before it could spread. And if something whispered to Ramirez that the rest of the world had long since been infected, well, he didn't listen to it.

To think such a thing was to suggest that Lord Galcian had somehow been -_worse_- for Arcadia...

No. He wouldn't allow such clearly false notions to trouble him. If the people of Esperanza were so vile, it was surely only because his Lord had not yet taken complete control of the city. And if they were beyond redemption; it was only further proof that the world could never become... clean... without his Lord's iron rule to guide it.

"--My Lord, I believe we should destroy Esperanza," Ramirez finally concluded aloud, "...military and all."

"Hmm..." Lord Galcian leaned forward slightly in his seat in thought. He resisted drumming his fingers; a habit long-ago formed. Before he had assumed full power of the world he had rarely been seated, -_especially_- with matters of importance, for he had never been above taking things into his own hands to ensure that they were done right.

These days, however, he often stayed in Soltis--restlessly pacing his study when he was not dealing with reports in this room. Lord Galcian had accomplished his life-long goal... he had become the most powerful being in all of Arcadia. Further, Zelos assured that not only did he own every single live thing on his world... but the moons as well.

And through them? The very elements.

But now that he had... everything...

He had assessed the possibilities and come to a conclusion. One dark eyebrow arched slightly as he regarded the young man before him, expression unsurprised. The Silvite had always been rather idealistic, and somewhat foolish in the light of his ideals. One could even go so far as to say that Ramirez's ethics blinded him. Fortunately, he was ever easy to control.

"Esperanza has become quite a large city, and a valuable resource." Lord Galcian finally spoke deliberately, leaning back once again into his seat, "Ramirez--you would have me destroy the entire city, simply because the people there have... offended you?"

In reply, the Silvite lowered his eyes, face flushing slightly with sudden shame. Was that why?

Was he in fact letting his typical Silvite standards for the world get in his way, impair his judgement? He had absolutely no right to second guess his Lord, the only correct and incorruptible man in all of Arcadia. The incident with Admiral Mendosa so many years previous had proven as much, but yet...

"I apologize, my Lord." Ramirez murmured softly, bowing low in respect... his newly-blackened hair entirely hiding his glance at Wren.

But yet... what did a man tolerate, allow to breed and infect, once he had everything--simply to keep from losing anything? Would a man such as Lord Galcian allow the world to fester... all in the name of power? Would... would he have discarded his original intent to destroy the weak and lead only the strong--in the face of more potential power?

Ramirez hesitated only a moment before he firmly turned his back on such disturbing thoughts, putting them in a mental box and closing the lid, and so he awaited his new orders in silence.

The man in question watched his closest servant for another long moment, dark eyes thoughtful and brooding. Ramirez, it seemed, would need to be taught--no--reminded that the Arcadians deserved no sympathy from him. Perhaps wishing to destroy the city was not in itself an act of empathy--but it was closer than his Silvite usually came to such a thing.

And, to be honest, he had not liked the shimmer of anger and... hurt, that had been present--if only barely--in the jade green eyes as his report was given. No, Lord Galcian could read Ramirez better than any, and this 'Ben' stranger had somehow gotten under the Silvite's armor--if only just a little. His death had surely opened a crack, letting in the other polluted things Ramirez had seen and experienced in the city of abandoned hope.

It was time to remind him of his own loyalty, before another incident such as over the Ixa'takan slaves occurred, all those years ago.

/ _"Lord Galcian! How can you treat the Ixa'takans like this! It's despicable!"_

_The Admiral had paused, nearly mid-step, and turned his head just enough to view a young officer in training lunging after him like a wild dog. The only thing keeping the foolish whelp from trying to tackle him to the floor on the spot, was a ship doctor holding him back... barely..._ /

"I am pleased that you were able to find out so much of the true situation, Ramirez. I will send you notice of your next assignment." Lord Galcian said abruptly. He made a dismissive gesture with one hand, and then watched as the Silvite and the four guards turned and left. The guards were likely heading for the transport pads, and Ramirez for his quarters to await his next set of orders.

"Wren, I have a job for you." The Lord of Arcadia said after a long moment, waiting until the doors had long since closed again, "I cannot have Ramirez faltering, I believe it is time to remind him that I am the only one he may rely on."

"Yes, my Lord." Wren said respectfully.

"But first, of course, -_your_- report on Esperanza..."

The Silvite did not target his quarters, but rather he found himself opening the door to one of the main gardens nearby. He hadn't given his destination any thought until after he'd stepped inside, whereupon Ramirez found himself blinking--staring at a vine coiled along the lip of a small fountain. He sat down abruptly on one of the scattered benches, bending over his overall-covered knees. Frowning, the Admiral ran both un-gloved hands through his onyx hair once as he stared thoughtfully at the floor between his feet.

Coming the rest of the way to his senses, he immediately decided not to stay long--but not to leave just yet either. His new orders would likely be sent to his quarters, which was of course the most logical place to find him, and the less a messenger had to look for him the safer the message itself would be. Besides, back in familiar surroundings, the general filth and disrepair of his factory clothes was beginning to make itself more known to him by the moment.

Valua had come and gone like a bad dream, and yet he still wore his uniform from those days... still kept it clean and in perfect repair. It was simply a long-formed habit, and without any real uniforms being assigned to him in the new era he had found his old look to be comfortingly familiar. That very tradition had made this most recent identity much easier--for even those that had seen him before in person did not recognize him. Not without his usual uniform, silver hair, and wickedly jagged sword...

A good thing, too, because he was still fairly well known in Esperanza.

/ _"You people are being taught a lesson." he had said coldly, standing just inside the gates of the city--for no one had bothered to close them, "The same lesson as the rest of your wretched world. The sooner you learn, the sooner things will be better for you."_ /

"Your wretched world." the Silvite repeated softly aloud, still staring intently at the floor.

/ _Amusing that I first said those words to them, and now they use them so very often..._ /

Ramirez managed to chuckle a little at the irony, but it rang false.

"Well, well, and what do we have here?" that voice, with its distinctively near-monotone quality and chill tone. It was immediately identifiable, and as such Ramirez didn't bother to look up even as the sound of footsteps came to a halt before him. "I thought that weeds in gardens were supposed to be disposed of, but, it is clear that I was mistaken."

Remaining firmly seated on the bench, Ramirez finally lifted his head from his hands. He craned his neck to look up--taking in the uniform of the one before him with clear disinterest. Nothing about this woman's appearance ever seemed to change.

Her monochromatic uniform was always impeccably clean and free of wrinkles, her pitch black hair was always pulled back in a severe bun, and her skin--pale as though she never walked under the sun--was always as clean as though she had just scoured it.

The only things that had any color to her were her eyes, and the plain pendant clasped tight at her throat. All three were simply points of blazing orange-gold amber set in a background of cold winter. He felt she rather looked like a corpse, minus the eyes and the pendant--or perhaps she was a corpse possessed.

"Admiral Jones," Ramirez replied to the coroner before him, jade green meeting orange gold with unflinching malice, "I suppose that means you had best remove yourself."

"Touché, Admiral Ramirez," she replied lightly, sketching a wholly sarcastic curtsey, "but hardly gentlemanly."

Megan Jones was the second Admiral of the new order, and as power-hungry as any. She had been a doctor in New Soltis at first, and Lord Galcian had discovered her true talents by accident when she had been asked to 'treat' a prisoner.

Ramirez didn't know exactly how much cutting open the human body could withstand without dying, but he had a feeling that Jones knew it down to a science. The woman was excellent at ripping the information straight out of a person--literally, if need be--and had absolutely no ethics that he had ever seen. Bring her anyone, male or female, young or old, and she would have the guards pin them down while she retrieved her scalpels from their case--always strapped to her left boot.

Jones couldn't fight, she couldn't cast anything but the most basic spells, and she had absolutely no use for sailing. But--there was a certain chill advantage to sending her into any situation, for the orders would be carried out to the letter and woe betide anyone--so much as a child--that stepped in her way. Ramirez would have long since killed her himself, were it not that she was as loyal to Lord Galcian as he had ever been.

"I would hardly consider you a lady, Admiral Jones." he finally growled, clearly annoyed. Loyal to his Lord she may be, but that hardly meant he enjoyed her company.

"Losing your temper already?" the sweet smile--one he knew to always be a sure sign of danger--curved upon her thin lips, a predator toying with her food. "A shame, we have -_so_- much catching up to do."

"We've nothing to 'catch up' on." Ramirez said, standing up abruptly. "Now, if you'll excuse me--"

And with that scant bit of warning he purposefully shouldered her aside. The Admiral found himself smirking coldly at the outraged gasp that followed him as he strode out of the gardens--his rather filthy civilian clothing having left a most amusing signature on her uniform.

/ _She'll immediately go change clothes, too, and might even have that set burned._ / Ramirez thought, amusement overpowering his annoyance at being driven from the gardens. / _If there is one thing Jones hates worse than people and dirt, it's being touched by dirty people. She hates contact much worse than even -_I_- do, which gives me a clear tactical advantage._ /

And the smirk grew, just a bit.

...It was fortunate for the new armada that their first and second Admirals were rarely both in the same place at the same time.

The Silvite came around the gradual circle of the outer palace and finally was within sight of his chambers. There, a very nervous looking messenger waited, literally wringing his hands as he stared anxiously at the door.

/ _Are people truly that scared of me?_ /

But he stifled the thought as fast as it had come. Of -_course_- they were, he was so often the instrument of Lord Galcian's will. He'd beheaded more than one suspected traitor in the ranks, often without any warning. And that, understandably, made him a little disconcerting to deal with no matter how loyal the one doing the dealing.

The fact that it took only a mere suspicion on his behalf to separate their head from their shoulders tended to have that effect. That and the way his sword could appear in his hand out of seemingly nowhere.

"Yes?" Ramirez finally said, slowing to a halt. He watched the courier with a raised eyebrow, completely forgetting for the moment that he only vaguely resembled his usual self. The Silvite held out his un-gloved hand for the envelope--barely visible--protruding from inside the messenger's jacket.

"Um, I'm waiting for--" the messenger paused here, staring at Ramirez's sharp jade green eyes. He -_knew_- the Admiral was supposed to be around here, and in looking for him he was presented with 'James' instead. However, he made the connection where a whole city had failed... for no one in Esperanza had been looking for the Silvite in specific--and so his guise had worked flawlessly there. "...Admiral Ramirez! Is that you?"

A single, silent nod.

"Oh thank the Moons, I was really worried I'd have to try and find you--I knocked several times and you weren't answering--" pause, stammer, "--of course you weren't, Sir, because you weren't -_in_- there... but I'm really glad I didn't have to try and find you anyway, because I was told that you're awfully difficult to track dow--"

"The letter, please." Ramirez sighed, cutting off the man's nervous rambling. Finally the envelope was produced and handed to him before-- bowing deeply and looking much like the mouse running from the cat, the messenger fled.

/ _Idiot._ / the Silvite thought, stepping into his chambers as he broke the seal on the envelope.

Inside was another sharply-folded bit of paper with that familiar, angular handwriting. Jade green eyes scanned the unfolded parchment more than once, not fully comprehending, before the new destination truly set in. With the realization of where 'James' would go next, a sudden wave of nausea forced Ramirez to hastily find a seat--pulling out the single chair from the nearby desk with a scrape of wood on stone and sitting down abruptly.

'_This time you will observe our military, and sniff out what traitors that you can._' The writing seemed to repeat, in the form of Lord Galcian's strong voice in his mind. '_You will be a new soldier, fresh out of training, by the same name and identity you chose for your last mission._'

He'd do it unquestioningly, of course. But... Moons... why there?

Couldn't Lord Galcian send Admiral Jones? She was a superb actress, far better at deceit than he. She was practically another Admiral Belleza--save that she held that pure, cold malice at her core that seemed to seep into all guises.

/ _He does not trust her like he does me._ / Ramirez reminded himself, scolding/ _I am the only one he has sent on these missions. I should be honored to be even -_this_- useful to my Lord._ /

Of course he was, but, the Admiral still couldn't help but feel... ill. The written orders slipped to the floor from nerveless fingers, momentarily forgotten, as Ramirez contemplated his own memories of over ten years past.

And meanwhile in the throne room, the aspiring officer named Wren bowed and exited. His destination was the same as that of the oblivious Silvite, but his orders were vastly different...

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	8. entry 08 :: failing the dream

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 10.09.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

(The really stilted bits of dialogue and the really dramatic gestures and such in this chapter are taken/described directly from the game.)

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 08: failing the dream )

The engine to Galcian's ship was amazing. It lit the entire area, making Vyse blink rapidly when they first entered the engine room. Blue light made everything... fuzzy, difficult to see anything in specific besides the tower in the center and the glowing energy.

"Look at the size of that moonstone!" Vyse said, gaping at the top, as Aika looked up automatically.

"Yeah, wow, that thing's bigger than the one we found on Shrine Island!"

"Look at the seals on it!"

"I found the door!" Gilder's voice broke into Vyse and Aika's... verbal... staring. They hurried around the engine, Vyse trying desperately not to gawk anymore, and caught up with the gunslinger and the Silvite.

"There's a ladder down there." Fina pointed down the corridor.

"All right! The bridge has to be close with all this wandering around we've done, let's go!"

"That looks like the bridge... Galcian must be in there." Fina noted.

It had been a long climb, but now the party stood before a large, external door. Clouds flew by overhead, the speed that the massive warship was still traveling at seeming to sink in once more, now that they stood on the outer deck again.

"Well, I guess we'll just have to break that door down, won't we?" Vyse said, stepping forward.

"That will not be necessary."

Twin puffs of smoke erupted from the bottom of the door as it began to shake, lowering like a Yafutoman drawbridge to reveal...

"Galcian!" Aika started as the former Grand Admiral himself strode out of the room beyond, a large, triangular sword clenched in his right hand.

"I did not realize that there were still this many people foolish enough to resist me. And you, Vyse, have caused me more trouble than anyone." the older man could have been speaking of the weather, for all the alarm he showed at finding them at his doorstep.

"Thanks." Vyse replied offhand, closing his eyes with a smug look, "It's an Air Pirate's duty to cause trouble... I feel so accomplished." his eyes re-opened, Vyse lifted one hand, "But there's one more thing I'd like to accomplish..." the Pirate pointed at Galcian, the end of whose sword hovered mere feet from the boy.

"I want to rid the world of you." Vyse finished, letting his arm drop back to his side.

"Heh heh..." Galcian raised his sword over his left shoulder, shutting his eyes now. "Very amusing... but this world shall be mine! It's a pity you won't be around to see it." ice blue eyes shot back open as the Grand Admiral declared--"Now, you shall feel my wrath!"

The massive sword slashed, and the battle began.

So it began, and so it ended... with the slash of a sword.

"How... could... this be! I... I will not... be... defeated..." Lord Galcian, however, found himself kneeling on the deck of his ship in front of his enemies.

"Your reign of terror is over!" Vyse declared, staring him down, fully assured that he'd won the day.

Galcian smirked.

"I don't think so..." and he lurched to his feet, leaving the heavy sword where it lay. "You may have won the battle, but I shall have my revenge!"

A single gesture from the Grand Admiral as he took a few unsteady steps backwards, and the bridge behind him suddenly began to move...

"What! The bridge!" Aika exclaimed, lurching forward.

"Fools, when will you realize that you cannot stop me!" Galcian said. "Now I shall destroy every last one of you."

Within moments, the bridge door had shut and the entire section of the ship separated... sailing upwards. Vyse could only gape for a moment, stupefied, before frustration set in and he grit his teeth, curling his hands into fists.

"I thought he was too arrogant to have an escape pod!" Vyse lifted, and then dropped, his sword arm...

"Vyse, he's getting away! We have to do something!" Aika shouted, pointing straight up with her gloved hand.

"If he gets away," Fina said, lifting one hand to her chest, "he'll retreat back to Soltis and we'll never get a chance to stop him!"

"The other pirates are tied up fighting with the Armada!" teeth clenching tighter yet, Vyse lifted his hand yet again... nearly shaking with frustration.

"...Huh?" Gilder blinked... "Hey..."

Vyse, too, blinked. Something had just built... a moment, something in the air... and released, without result. He had the distinct feeling, for just that second, that something...

...had just gone terribly wrong.

By the time they'd made it back to their ship, Galcian's had been re-admitted into the dome around Soltis through one of the honey-combed-shaped panels, which had dissolved just long enough to let him pass. Clearly this was how the Hydra had come out to attack in the first place.

"Look! Vyse, something bad is happening!" Aika yelled, pointing out of the Delphinus' massive windows at Soltis. The silver-white continent was pulsing, the raised shapes nearest the tower flaring with light.

"What! No! They're going to use the Rains of Destruction again!" Vyse gripped the wheel of the Valuan battleship, feeling helpless.

"There's nothing we can do to stop them!" Aika continued.

"Ramirez... please..." Fina spoke to her clasped hands, her eyes shut.

Suddenly she blinked. Something had just built... a moment, something in the air... and released, without result. She had the distinct feeling, for just that second, that something...

...had just gone terribly wrong.

"We have to retreat, Vyse!" light was swirling up the tower of Soltis, and only a moment later it shot towards the Silver moon...

Ships all around them were spinning, moving to flee. Pirate, the remaining Armada, it didn't matter at this point... everyone was well aware that they were under the Silver moon's domain and that, right now, was a Very Bad place to be.

"Quick, boy!" Drachma bellowed as he and Enrique bolted through the door and onto the bridge, "Get under Soltis!"

"Right!" Vyse didn't pause to think, he only had time to act even as the steel-armed captain shouted a spell to bolster the ship's defenses. The Pirate forced the Delphinus to speed downwards at a red-lining angle, the warship's reinforced hull groaning in protest at the nose-dive even as they swept into the dark expanse of lower sky.

It was just as the blue and silver warship slipped beneath the shielded continent that the Rains reached Arcadia once more.

Vyse jerked, still clutching the wheel, as the mental images of the massive chunks of moon hitting Pirate Isle, Sailor...

"Get a grip on yourself!" someone was pulling him away from the wheel, he was fighting them, they were keeping him from helping--must save--

**CRUNCH!**

**shatter!** Something huge impacted with the side of the Delphinus, sending them careening further from the shielded continent and the occupants of the warship flying. The ship veered back immediately, however, heading directly back under the relative safety of the underside of Soltis.

**SCREEEEE!**

This had been much bigger, but it merely grazed the tail of the proud warship from above, sending the nose upwards to barely avoid a head-on collision with the bottom of the continent. As it was, the top of the Delphinus ground against the unyielding stone with a paralyzing -_shriek_- as it finally slid into safety. Of a sorts.

**Slap!**

This time, the impact was with Vyse's face, and he finally re-opened his eyes to find himself sprawled on the floor, face-to-boots with a crouched Enrique.

"Are you yourself again?"

He nodded mutely, half-aware that he'd blanked out for a moment. Gilder was now at the wheel, the ship's Deep Sky shields had been sealed over the windows and the floodlights inside were flickering...

"...half the rear propellers were smashed, port side has been ripped completely open, and most of the navigational systems were ground into scrap on top..." Gilder was informing Drachma, quietly, "...the living quarters, the mess hall, the kitchens... crushed..."

Vyse rolled onto his side, away from Enrique's boots, and heaved.

"...everything past this room isn't even pressurized against lower sky anymore... the engines will probably give out any minute..." Gilder glanced at Vyse, briefly, before continuing even quieter... "...I never thought I'd say this, but..."

/ _...they're all dead... we... we're all dead._ /

Vyse made a small noise in the back of his throat, clenching his eyes shut as the unforgiving reality set in.

"I've..." he choked the words out, "I've failed everyone..."

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	9. entry 09 :: bones and ashes

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 11.23.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 09: bones and ashes )

It was night when they found it, and the Delphinus lay broken.

The warship was a charred husk. Warped support beams thrust into the dark Valuan sky like the ribs of a decaying animal corpse. The blackened tatters of a curtain still clung desperately to the starboard side, flickering stiffly in the wind as it hung outside its shattered window.

Shards of melted glass glittered like freshly-spilt tears in the glare of the search lights as the Armada warship lowered, carefully, toward the half-crushed wreckage. Taking in the horrible scene from the bridge of the approaching Monoceros, the Silvite Admiral felt the briefest flicker of unexplained emotion.

It was almost as though, for that fleeting moment, it didn't matter to him that the crew had been his enemies. Nobody really deserved to die that way...

--the search lights shone through a gaping hole, and for a split second one lit on the grisly remains of a nameless pirate--

He shook his thoughts away deliberately, like water droplets from his fingertips, and regained his mental footing. Ramirez could philosophize about it later all he liked, but now was hardly the time or place.

"We'll lower over there, to dropping range." he said, pointing, his voice showed no sign of the unease he couldn't shake. "No one else leaves this ship until I tell them to."

It was doubtful that this order would bother his men, no one was eager to venture into that disaster zone.

Ramirez's helmsmen obediently eased the Monoceros down closer to what had once been the Great Valuan Gate. The bottom half of the massive defensive and offensive tunnel had survived the Rains, and this was where the Delphinus now lay, in its chosen grave.

"Vice-Captain Serak," the Admiral addressed one of the men on the bridge, knowing him from all the others even though they all wore the Valuan helmets that hid their faces. "Keep charge of the ship until I return." and with that, he exited the bridge.

Even without the extra stripes on his uniform, Ramirez would have known his ship's Vice-Captain by the way he always leaned on one leg heavier than the other--standing slightly lopsided. The Silvite made it a point to find ways of recognizing the different soldiers, if only for professionalism's sake.

It certainly beat yelling 'hey, you!' every time he needed someone's attention.

Finally arriving on the deck of his ship, Ramirez grasped and vaulted over the cold railing without hesitation. A moment later and he had landed lightly on the last of the Great Valuan Gate, his legs taking most of the shock for him in a practiced, graceful bend.

Ramirez took a precautionary moment after straightening to draw his sword from his side, and to get a feel for the footing, before beginning his walk. The Delphinus lay not at all far from the edge, its decimated tail end turned toward his approach, warped propellers and melted puddles of ash-dusted steel reflecting dimly on the ground along his path.

This same ship had reportedly navigated the dark rift, and he knew it had also followed De Loco into Deep Sky. An engine of that size and strength, turned unstable, was mind-numbing. The explosion would rip through the toughest of materials with a heat and force unknown in even the deadliest of spells.

He could almost see it, flowering up and outwards in a screaming gust of heat, smoke, and death... it had split the back of the warship open like an Ixa'takan melon. Such brutality, and yet the results were almost beautiful in the pooling of what moonlight managed to fight its way through the constant cloud cover of Valua.

There was a sweet smell in the air, it finally penetrated his awareness as he grew closer.

This was how one would ordinarily describe ash in general... but this was far worse. It was cloying, sickly, and so potent that it made the back of Ramirez's throat tighten in revulsion. He had smelled death many times before, and even death under flames... but never after it had been exposed to the elements.

The Admiral reflexively tightened his grip on his sword, though he logically knew there was nothing living left here to fear, and continued his advance.

Ramirez could almost feel... heat... emanating from the burst engine room as he neared it, and he peered cautiously inside the gaping wound of the hull. It was just his mind playing tricks on him, though, and he released the breath he hadn't remembered holding, green eyes un-narrowing.

What had once been the top hull to the proud ship was now a wide, yawning hole to match the port side... a thin-looking strip of warped metal between the two gashes was all that separated them from being one gigantic wound. The port side had been slashed open by something massive, probably the same thing that had crushed the middle of the ship, and the top... seemed to have simply vanished.

Ramirez found himself staring through the gash, up through the top, and at the cloud-obscured yellow moon...

The searchlights from his ship began sweeping obediently along the Delphinus, not having anywhere specific to focus for him, and one blinded him for a second as it passed him over.

Resigning himself to a grisly investigation, the Admiral grasped one warped, rib-like support beam, and stepped into the ship through the side wound. Here he waited a few moments, trying to tune out the smells and ignore the amount of ash still in the air. Ramirez gazed upward again, noting that the huge hole in the ceiling coincided with the amount of ash on the floor, covering the glass and... other things within that direct path downwards.

"I see." Ramirez mused aloud to no one, using his voice to distance himself. The heat must have made the top extremely brittle, and it would have turned to nothing shortly after cooling again. He turned his gaze to the giant windows left nearly intact, their glass had shattered inwards, and melted to the floor...

"The glass was broken before they arrived here, and those were dead before the fire reached them." a cold voice said from behind him, causing the Admiral to spin on one foot and bring his sword up to attack--

--the doctor.

He paused, lowering his guard only slightly.

"I ordered that no one else would come down before I signaled." Ramirez said evenly.

"Lord Galcian," said the doctor, tone as cold as the Grand Valuan Gate beneath, "told me to investigate anything falling under my specialties, Admiral, whether -_you_- specifically ordered me to or not."

Ramirez had known of the order, of course. Determination, his Lord had told him, was what he wanted to test here. They had known there would be some grisly findings in the blasted city, but, none of them had known the Delphinus would be here as well...

"Dead people," that cold voice continued as though speaking to a simpleton, "and the way they became that way, fall quite obviously under my specialties."

He kept his expression neutral as one of the lights swept over them, then nodded shortly and lowered his blade.

"Continue, then."

"So glad to have your permission, Admiral." Megan Jones said evenly, stepping past him and then pointing clearly to one of the dark forms near them.

The Monoceros' crew had obviously been aware of her departure, because one of the search lights obediently came to rest where she indicated... on one of the charred, blackened bodies.

"The glass isn't on that body, or any of the others from what I can see." She began, holding the air of one explaining something very basic.

"Get to the point." Ramirez said coldly, earning an impatient glance from the doctor. Jones herself walked to the body carefully and bent her knees, coming to a crouch beside it.

"Roll it over."

"What?"

Another impatient look was flashed at him from freakish golden-amber eyes.

"...fine." Ramirez, too, approached the body. He hid his distaste carefully as he rolled the corpse over, using the flat of his sword. There wasn't all that much left of the thin cadaver, various sky fish and the elements had taken their toll rapidly. The Admiral didn't find anything particularly special about the other side of the body, there wasn't even an identifiable face left between the fire and the rest.

A stray lock of brown hair was all that hadn't been burnt beyond recognition on the entire head. The yellowish-white of skull showed through more often than not, the flesh pecked off by sky fish and most of what had been left decayed in the nearly-constant rain.

"See."

"See -_what_-, doctor." the Admiral sighed in annoyance.

"You don't. Fine, I will try to use as small of words as possible." Jones said, not even bothering this time to lace the caustic words with sarcasm, "Glass under the body means they fell on top of the shards, which means they died after the glass was broken."

"That still doesn't prove that the fire didn't kill them." he replied, watching as she removed a thin case from her left boot and opened it. Inside were a variety of scalpels, and she used one to pry some half-burnt blueish cloth scraps away from what remained of the chest. Beneath, the remaining flesh was darkened and sticky.

"No. But then, what I've told you thus far -_should_- have been obvious to anyone." she snapped, slicing into the body with disgusting precision, sawing a portion of the fire-brittle rib cage apart and then using a long pair of tweezers from the scalpel case to remove the bits of bone.

There wasn't much skin left, but the rib-cage had apparently protected the internal organs and tissue from what had to have been a fast fire.

It made sense, Ramirez thought, hurriedly thinking of the ceiling of the ship that would have still been intact. Without anything to burn outside of the ship, the fire would have been contained inside... and would have smothered itself even with the side and rear gashes. This had to be the reason the entire thing hadn't burned to ash... the fire hadn't had time to consume everything.

What little fire would have been left over, fueled for air by the gashes, would have been left wide open for Valua's regular rain once the ceiling went...

Sure enough, the cloth on the front of the body was damp with ash and water, creating a dark but thin sort of mud. He was trying -_not_- to look at what the doctor was doing, though, as she sliced into what had to be a lung.

"There, see?"

He was trying hard not to.

But... apparently she wasn't waiting for a reply, anyway.

"This body never inhaled any smoke, which means it stopped breathing before the fire started." Ramirez looked down at the crouching doctor with distaste as she continued her report, "The lung is compressed but not burst. I'd say this ship was in lower sky when the hull was ripped apart." if she found it at all strange that a ship had been in lower sky to begin with, she didn't show it as she stood back up and gestured to a much bigger form closer to the rear of the ship.

"That one, I would think, was killed by the blast." the searchlight moved accordingly, lighting on a large, similarly burnt body, and glinting off of a massive metal arm. There was shrapnel, clearly from the nearby engine room, imbedded deep into the corpse. The areas that had been hit showed that it had to have been standing at the time.

It had been over mercifully fast, Ramirez surmised, because the body obviously hadn't lived long enough to do more than land like a rag doll.

"You're extremely observant." he noted, grudgingly.

"And you are -_not_-." Jones said in her monotone voice, turning to go back to the lift ropes dangling from the Monoceros.

"Just what sort of doctor are you?" Ramirez demanded. Shock, he supposed, had set in from the carnage of the wreck. Otherwise he would never have bothered to ask, and he would have at the very least reprimanded her for her disrespect by then. Megan Jones wasn't taking her orders directly from him, but, regardless...

"A coroner, Admiral," came the reply, before she was gone.

Ramirez reigned his impatience in at the answer, telling himself to ask Lord Galcian about it when he next had the chance. Right now, he had more to find out about the crash, and so he resolutely climbed out one of the windows to get a look at the other side.

It was certainly easier than walking around the entire ship just yet, anyway.

Ah, and now here was something interesting. Shining dully, a steady trickle of old, dried blood led him around toward the back of the ship again, and the searchlight followed him. Only moments later, Admiral Ramirez found himself standing on the edge of the Gate, staring out towards what was left of Lower Valua.

The ruins were nearly invisible from here in the semi-darkness, but, within lifeboat distance across the chasm... if barely. Certainly a ship as big as the Delphinus would have a large crew, and a few survivors out of so many casualties wasn't at all improbable.

It was time to pay Lower Valua a visit, Ramirez decided abruptly, turning to head back to the Monoceros.

The dead... would wait.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	10. entry 10 :: moonstone madness

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 01.30.2005. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 10: moonstone madness )

"I decline." Admiral Jones folded her gloved hands carefully upon the conference table, fixing him with a steady, disconcerting gaze. She had perfected that look, he surmised, long before Wren had ever risen far enough in the ranks to know the Admiral herself personally.

Wren opened his mouth to argue, object.

"You may leave." the Admiral cut him off, coldly. He glared, she stared, and of the two--her eyes cast the most chill by far. Without seeming to even try, the frosty bitch...

"Are you dismissing me, Admiral Jones?" he smirked, but would have that triumphant quirk of the mouth wiped away shortly enough.

"Not at all, Wren of Esperanza."

Sarcastic, as always, and still in that constant near-monotone voice. Wren opened his mouth to reply... and found himself staring, slightly cross-eyed, down the barrel of a very large pistol. Jones, behind it, tilted her head slightly to the side, not a single twinge of an eyelash breaking her composure.

"Merely making a suggestion."

"Ah," he fumbled after his own control, swallowing. Even that was not as... easily managed while facing certain death at point-blank range. "I... see. I'll be going then."

"Allow me to make another suggestion, Wren of Esperanza." she said, cutting him off neatly. "You may have tricked Lord Galcian into raising you temporarily to the rank of Admiral, but, one of us you are -_not_-. Not to myself, not to Admiral Ser--"

The door to their meeting room swung open, and an extremely nervous looking messenger rushed in.

"Admiral Jones! They caught--"

Jones swung her gun away from Wren's face, and there was a loud **BANG**.

And then the screaming started, the messenger dropping to the floor and clutching his mangled knee.

The bones were shattered and tissue ripped apart from the slug that had fired a mere four feet away, and blood from the severed artery was spurting several feet across the floor. Wren watched, morbidly transfixed, as the man's hands turned scarlet to the wrists with his own blood, and the tattered cloth of his uniform darkened around the wound. He was thrashing, gasping for air between screams, and Jones...

"Have someone clean this mess up." the ebony-haired woman said, eyeing the scene with disgust as she stood, "You -_can_- manage that, can't you?"

And then she was gone, stepping carefully around the messenger and easily avoiding his grasping, bloodied hand. It wouldn't do to get blood on her uniform, now, would it?

...even the desperate screams didn't seem to phase her. Wren licked his lips, suddenly tempted to catch her from behind, pin her to the wall by the neck...

/ _I must have that composure, that coldness._ / he thought, standing as well now. Wren walked around the table to better watch the messenger bleed out, the scarlet of blood in bright contrast against the dark marble floor.

/ _Megan Jones, you will be helpless when I have you, you will be mine. We'll see how long you keep that calm when I have you under me, won't we?_ /

He shook the messenger's grasping hand off of his boot, annoyed, as he stepped around him. The screams were dying off, fading, a sight and sound that the Coroner had long ago bored of, clearly, considering her work. He'd break her, someday, and enjoy it. Something about the cold bitch just appealed to that side of his psyche, begging to be crumbled and scattered in the wind. Challenged him to try it, she who -_dared_- hold a gun to -_his_- face.

/ _Oh, I'll have you all right, you filthy bitch. I'll break you somehow, but you are not my priority... no. First, first..._ /

First he had traps to spring, and lies to weave. He'd snare them all, just like his stupid brother...

And he walked away, not bothering to order anyone to clean the mess in the conference room. Someone would come across it shortly enough.

/ _It had been raining heavily that afternoon, the leather straps connecting the armor of his uniform had creaked faintly as he'd walked, and the silver-blond hair had been matted to his face as the water ran over him. Funny thing about rain, it hit everything just the same... mountain, human, ship..._

_The trail up Moonstone Mountain had been slick, and muddy. Visibility had been poor... and he had paused for a moment before entering the mountain, taking a deep breath of the crisp Arcadian air and contemplating the rain._

_The Admiral would protect him. Everything was going to be just fine._ /

"Name." the order shook him out of his reverie, misty rain battering the side of the mountain was replaced by harsh midday sunlight as a pair of jade green eyes slid to view the speaker. A guard with a list in one hand and a sword in the other was watching him with a bored expression, his face not hidden as it would have been in the days of Valua.

"James, of Esperanza.." he said, sharply, "--Sir."

"Straight ahead, don't make any turns once you enter the mines and you'll meet up with the right people."

James nodded, and began to retrace his own steps from so many years ago.

Funny how it always seemed to rain on fateful days. Or, if it didn't actually always rain, then he always at least remembered it that way. He paused a moment at the entrance to the mountain, taking a deep breath of hot Arcadian air, and then continued on his way.

It wasn't raining today.

Everything was going to be just fine.

It was only an hour later and James was well back into an ill mood, seated at a desk inside one of the mine's many offices. He was damp, for one thing. Underground tunnels of any sort, in the land of the green moon, were bound to be a little humid... but the knowledge did not improve his outlook.

Rain, or lack of, was firmly gone from his mind now.

His hair hung in clumps, sticking to his face and to the back of his neck. The inky-black strands seemed to be trying--likely just to spite him--to make their way into his eyes at every opportunity. This wasn't helping his mission one bit, even -_if_- that mission was currently mundane, simple paperwork. He was copying the crude tally marks from scrap paper down into record books as real numbers.

And all -_that_- would accomplish was that later the process of mining the moonstones would seem a little more civilized than it really was.

Paperwork. Bloody, ridiculous, horrid paperwork... and it was all for appearances. Nothing particularly interesting, just records of what had been mined that day, 'fancied up'. Feh.

Suddenly, as if to join the conspiracy his hair was launching against him, James' eyes began to water. Charming. He paused to swipe the back of his free hand across them and glanced to the side.

There, another desk stood with old record books stacked atop it. Not the same books as his mind's eye suddenly recalled, but similar enough in general appearance...

It hadn't been raining anymore when a younger Ramirez had reached this room fourteen years ago. Not that he would have known it, or cared, or likely ever remembered it anyway.

/ _Finally, the record books he'd been looking for all day. The officers in charge of the mine had put up a valiant effort to keep him from these notes and figures. They knew, even if Ramirez did not, what Admiral Mendosa would probably do to them if the silver-haired assistant discovered them and made the connection._

_Unfortunately for Mendosa, he did, and fortunately for the officers, the crooked Admiral would never have the chance to exact any revenge. But... that was the eventual future, and right 'now' the door was pushed open and a wide-eyed Ramirez slipped in, lantern in hand..._ /

The bounty-hunter growled at himself, and wrenched his attention back to the books in front of him and the ink that he'd been allowing to spot. He had, as himself, been here only once since that betrayal--sniffing out the air pirates that had taken refuge in the tunnels. Centime and his accomplice had been the hardest pirates to finally corner, and it hadn't even been in Moonstone Mountain that -_that_- particular hunt had come to a conclusion. He'd only managed to chase them out again like rats.

Back then, Ramirez had been too busy to dwell on these... memories.

He wasn't all that busy here, now, as James. Stupid, inane, bloody paperwork...

"Well," he said wryly, feeling eyes on him from the doorway, his voice barely audible to his own ears over the scratching of his quill, "at least it isn't grills."

Past.

Gilder hurried, boots splashing in the mud of the upper mining tunnels.

Of course Centime knew, but he wasn't fool enough to let the inventor flee at his own pace. Too much was riding on the balding air pirate and his inventions, he'd only barely completed the designs for the...

the...

...carbon-automated revolving something-or-other. Gilder cursed, that damn thing needed a shorter name than what Centime always called it. The gunslinger could never even remember its real name.

C.A.R. he decided as he ran, CAR. That would do just fine, and it made for easier shouting--

"Centime! Get the CAR plans and lets -_go_-!"

--at stubborn inventors.

"CAR? You mean the central-aligned ro--" a thunderous crash drowned out the ridiculous name as Gilder started grabbing up the scrolls.

"I never remember anything more than C.A.R. anyway." Gilder muttered, grabbing Centime by the elbow and forcing him out. "Come on, man, we've got to hide and fast! That fucking Silvite is probably already anchored outside!"

Pirate Hunter, that's what they few others remaining had taken to calling Ramirez. He was just 'the bastard', to Gilder, who would have welcomed Clara's hunting after such a long taste of what it was like to have Ramirez sniffing around after his life's blood.

"Down the elevator shaft, we can't risk using the machines--they make too much noise!"

What had, apparently, served as DeLoco's office was right near the side and main entrance to the mines... and unfortunately it was the only part of the underground system with enough lighting for Centime's purposes. Hell, the main way into the mountain passed directly under the office, and the very idea made the hair on the back of the gunslinger's neck stand on end.

/ _Yeah, doesn't it just figure. The only way to hide is to trap ourselves, feh, well I just hope the bastard doesn't realize that we're really here._ /

"Gilder, I'm not certain..." the bespectacled inventor began. Gilder had just pried one of the elevator shaft doors open, and he paused. "if we take that route, the door will tell it."

"You're right." he frowned, shutting the massive door again with a lurch, "wait! Those stupid trap doors!"

"Yes, that will work perfectly!"

They took off at a sprint down the side tunnel, both grasping blueprint scrolls in their arms, until they came to a fork in the path.

"That one!"

**Churnk!**

**Churnk!**

Gilder and Centime managed to both land on the track relatively unharmed, the empty cart that would have caught them and carried them down had long since been moved out of the way.

"Up the tracks and into the tunnel!" Centime whispered urgently as the sound of metal-shod boots clacking steadily along metal walkway sounded from above and out of sight.

End.

The pipes were sad.

He sighed, melancholy, as he listened to the music drifting up from the bottom of the mines. Ixa'takans were known for their pipes and drums, he supposed it was only logical that the same thrumming musical ability that always seemed to be hopeful and determined could also express despair.

"Hey, boy, aren't you going to see to that?" a gruff voice demanded, shaking him out of his brooding.

"Of course, sir." he replied, saluting before reluctant steps took him across the metal mesh walkway, heading for the main elevator down.

"Make sure you kill whichever one it is, and smash the pipes." was called after him.

The soldier resolutely kept his shoulders from sagging.

It had been a week since he'd started, and he'd finally been moved up from record-keeping on the list of daily chores. But to be honest, the ex hunter wasn't certain that it was a step that he particularly liked... cattle keeper. James ran the gloved fingers of one hand through his inky black hair, pushing the strands back along his scalp in a new habit as he headed down a flight of stairs, winding his way gradually down to the holding areas. The onyx hair, ever stubborn, flopped back into his face.

Too soon for his comfort, he stood flat-footed on the lowest level of Moonstone Mountain. He glared upwards a moment, delaying himself, before turning his attention back to the level he was on. The Ixa'takans were huddled around in thick groups on the dirt floor, bright eyes watching him warily.

"As you know," James said softly, "if you don't give up whoever was playing, I'll have to start killing you."

Some of them blinked, but none of them moved or spoke. Bright, gleaming eyes continued to stare at him from a sea of dusky skin and dark hair.

The Ixa'takans were a proud people, he reflected, moved more by their beliefs and their rituals than by material possessions. Still, they too were foolish... their own king had called Grendel down on their heads to try and drive the Valuans away all those years ago.

"Fools." James murmured, drawing his military saber and leveling it against the nearest dark neck. "I ask only this last time, before I begin. Which?"

They said nothing, did nothing, only watched as the previously-unstained blade lurched forward, slashed to the side. Two men fell, the first in two parts, second gasping before his sword ended his life in one final, deliberate stroke. What guilt he felt, he felt only as James. Or, at least, that's what he told himself... over and over, fiercer and fiercer. The Ixa'takans were foolish, they deserved nothing from him.

"The next pair loses a limb," he lifted the sword, angling the long, sharp blade expertly, "each."

"Hoi, James, man." a voice broke into his stare-down with the Ixa'takans over the bodies, "They didn't tell us you were such a cold son of a bitch. Wot've you been doing, studying Admiral Ramirez?" and a hand dropped, stupidly, to his shoulder. It was a good thing the other soldier had given him plenty of warning that he was there, else the man would have joined the other two in silence upon the floor.

As it was, the blade twitched slightly in his hand, and his grip tightened.

"Of course not." he lowered the sword, producing a cloth from his recruit uniform to clean it with. Which part or both he was denying was up to the guard to decide as he sheathed the blade. Well, even in Esperanza he hadn't faked a bubbly personality... in fact there had been very little faking there at all. He'd only had to hide his identity, not his predisposition against idle chatter.

"Try not to kill the entire work force over a pair of pipes, eh? Anyway." the guard was steering him out of the area and chatting as though nothing at all was uncommon in a decapitated and a run-through pair of Ixa'takans on the ground. "We're all heading out to catch sky-fish later, you coming with?"

"...I suppose." James replied, annoyed. The soldiers treated the Ixa'takans as the cattle they were, and there he found no fault. However, their entire attitude about it was abhorrent. The human race was not supposed to be put into slavery, it was supposed to be in remolding. There was a line there, a thin one, and he felt that Moonstone Mine had long since cheerfully danced across it. Not only that, but they disregarded the regulations against going out and fishing for themselves, using it--as he had noticed--as currency amongst themselves. Quite illegal.

The memory of starvation in the streets and drunken lechers in the bar resurfaced unbidden, and he felt for only a second that with or without the new Armada's heavy hand... the world was doomed to destroy itself. Then, came the memory of Ben, cut down by his adored older brother...

As if reading his mind, the guard next to him broke into chatter once more.

"Hey, did ya hear the news? We've got another Admiral."

"Another..."

"Yep, fourth Admiral Wren. They've already started forming up his fleet... can't imagine why we still have a fleet for each Admiral though. It's not like there's countries to capture or pirates to kill anymore eh? I think they just do stuff like this for something to do."

"..." James considered the news, mind spinning. The same Wren? It wasn't that common of a name...

"He's coming to inspect the mines in a few weeks, I hear." the words left a wash of dread in the ex hunter, he knew how that man inspected. Not to mention that his identity was no longer a secret to the blond who had so casually executed his brother. "So, we'll see how full of crap he is then, eh? Well, we'll come get you after mess, got the boat an' all."

A solid, too-familiar whap to his shoulder, and the guard marched off along a side tunnel, leaving James feeling sick and apprehensive with his thoughts.

Later at mess, he barely touched his food.

Not to say that he was ever a heavy eater, as even in these times of 'peace' he remained thin. Toned muscle and tendon, he carefully ignored any comments overheard about his 'girlish' figure.

He was a weapon, he would remain in top shape... only his temper had dulled over the last five years of Soltis reign. James--or rather, Ramirez in this case--had... mellowed in his reactions, matured into his role of Admiral. There was still that fiery spark there when it came to the idea of anyone going against his Lord, but, it was rarely called into play anymore.

His efficiency apparently made him an odd sort of recruit, however. Especially as he still looked a good ten years younger than he really was, even more so with the blackened hair. And unfortunately, people still found him magnetically fascinating... which made his role as the ex bounty hunter all the more difficult.

James bowed his head over his food, picking at it with his fork and contemplating how to go about his plan this evening. He had decided what to do with his share of the fish they would net, and it had nothing to do with trading to the other soldiers of the mountain. He wouldn't help them make a currency of the stuff, and tossing it into deep sky seemed like too much of a waste.

The trickiest part, he decided, would be in cooking it all. The sky fish of this day and age were in incredible plenty without fishermen, merchants, or pirates, so he knew there was sure to be a lot.

Magic, he decided. It was crude, but it would be effective. It wasn't like the Ixa'takans would be particularly picky about it.

This settled on, James went back to trying not to think about 'Admiral' Wren and all that this development implied. He was going to need a bit of parchment and a quill for this fish plan, just in case, and he left mess early to ready his backup plan.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	11. entry 11 :: death's white rose

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 05.21.2005. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 11: death's white rose )

The ship chosen for the illegal fishing trip was small and borderline rickety. James frowned slightly at the spots of rust, most larger than his spread fingers, as he filed across the gangplank and onto the deck. His fellow soldiers were mostly already aboard, and the few who had come after him followed quietly, talking back and forth in a hushed tone about the newest gossip.

Namely, fourth Admiral Wren. James' inky black eyebrows drew downwards a moment, the slight frown growing another fraction. Admiral Wren, the older brother of Ben, the one who had betrayed his trusting little brother--not once, but twice--without batting an eyelash. He'd abandoned the kid without a word, then executed him, and the power-hungry glint in those cold eyes had not been feigned.

Naturally, to seek power was fine by his book, but something about the blond man just... made his skin crawl. So quick to betray, so lax with thievery, and so loose with his sword--killing more random people than actual criminals. It was incredibly... sloppy. Disgusting, really.

/ _I will trust that you know what you're doing, Lord Galcian. But..._ / he felt helpless, standing by while a poisonous snake slithered up his Lord's arm, forced to believe that his Lord knew better than to get bitten... but worried all the same. Galcian was the strongest man in all of Arcadia, without a doubt, but lately... he'd been rather strange, as well. The Lord was discontent, restless, and it was only punctuated by Ramirez's carefully-denied, but growing, doubts about his own choices to serve and support the former Grand Admiral.

And now there was Wren added into the mix, like a thick poison stirred into rotten stew.

/ _Jones will keep an eye on things, she is nothing if not loyal._ /

Of course, having to consciously place his trust in the caustic doctor that had clashed with him from the beginning was grating, but, it was also true. Jones would help his Lord if she helped anyone, that much was certain. The Badger Admiral desired power... but not to rule Arcadia.

Ramirez had carefully baited her over the years, hoping to find the slightest trace of will to betray, the smallest excuse to cut her smirking head from her body, and had been sorely disappointed. No, ruling the world would involve dealing with too many live people, apparently, and the coroner had little use for those with a pulse who were not strapped onto her operating table, a glinting scalpel in her hand.

/ _She can have Wren, as far as I care._ /

The boat, meanwhile, had loaded up and cast off, and part of a net was pushed into his hands.

Fishing was mostly a matter of looping a net from the craft, and the helmsman maneuvered so that the net caught schools of fish. Then the rope web had to be hauled in, ideally without the haulers being bitten, and weighed down onto the deck long enough for the creatures to either suffocate themselves (if there were enough of them), or a spell to be cast. The spell involved was simple and low-powered, and a mere human child could cast it.

Oddly enough, it was a water-based spell... as if fish had a single thing to do with liquid.

Ramirez heaved on the net when the others heaved, let it loose when the others let it loose, and pretty much ignored the physical world as he brooded. That is, until his boot slipped enough to bring his attention back out, and he looked down to find his heel grinding into an unfolded bit of parchment.

Automatically, he stooped and plucked the smeared message from the ship decking, taking note that the un-stamped seal had been sliced in two. At least he hadn't stomped on an unopened letter and broken the seal himself, an invasion of privacy he considered distasteful under any circumstances--accident or not.

But here it was already opened and unfolded in his hand, and no one seemed to be looking for it... Ramirez couldn't help but read it. Maybe a scan of the first line would tell him who it belonged to, at the least, but that idea was dashed with a glance at the heading.

_Sir,_

And nothing else, it could be anyone. So he read onward, and jade green eyes narrowed over what the smeared, scarce words seemed to imply...

_Things progress well. I was nearly caught by the Admiral during her inspection, but managed to keep you from her attention._

_I remain your faithful vassal._

The Admiral mentioned was clearly Jones, the only female out of the three... no, four (if one counted Wren's promotion) to hold such a rank. What was it that the author and recipient of this letter had hidden from her? Why keep the addressed "Sir" from her attention?

It smacked of trouble, and Ramirez tucked the refolded letter away in his jacket, watching those around him for signs of them missing it. No one had even noticed that he'd stopped working with the net, apparently. Those who weren't hauling fish on board were gathered just outside the cabin, and a small crate of loqua was the center of -_their_- attention.

Something near a dozen people were on this tiny ship, and it only took half that to man-handle the nets. It seemed that turns were being taken, so his stopping wasn't a big deal at all.

"Hey, James, ya just gonna -_stare_-, or are ya gonna come -_have_- some?" came the call from a more-than-slightly drunk recruit.

The Silvite approached thoughtfully, as his mind churned over the find. It wasn't until several moments later that he realized the group was staring at him expectantly, and he had come to a stop by the crate.

"Well?"

"I don't drink." he said, curtly, and sat down beside it as though that had been his intention all along. Here he thought more, and as he watched the loqua pass from soldier to soldier, he grew less suspicious. No, whoever it was had probably just been keeping the mine's lack of proper inter-military enforcement away from Jones so that she wouldn't -_shoot_- them. It was unlikely to be anything more sinister than that.

After all, the Admirals of Lord Galcian were a feared group, with reason and no matter the reign.

Thus convinced, Ramirez allowed his head to rest back against the railing behind him, and idly watched the lives play out before him.

It was a small room, but with adequate ventilation and lighting for its purpose. The floor and walls were tiled, white and as sterile as the long, waist-high table that centered the chamber. Tiles continued past the draining grate that ringed the entire base of the fixture, on up to where the brushed steel top rounded over them.

On top of this table, which gleamed dully even in the too-bright lighting, brackets were mounted. To each pair there was a single, wide leather strap on one, and a rolling buckle to accommodate said strap on the other. Everything in this room was monochrome, from the bright white tiles to the brushed steel and bleached leather, and lit as brightly as though the sun hovered in the ceiling itself.

The single door was opened now, and into this room and between two guards was drug one man. Two more guards followed behind the first, and a young boy in white, pushing a steel cart, was the end of the procession. The captured man reeked of loqua, was filthy to boot, and he screamed and begged and pleaded as he was forced onto the table by the four uniformed guards. Meanwhile, the boy... perhaps twelve or thirteen, pushed the cart into its place and locked its wheels, bent, and pulled a small stepladder from the bottom shelf of the cart.

This was unfolded on the tile floor by the table as the guards secured the straps, one over the forehead, one on each wrist, one at the hips, and one for each ankle. At a nod from the boy, they all left with out a word, and the door closed ominously behind them. The man, now silent, blinked tear-filled eyes at the too-bright lights, forced to look only up, as the child produced a pair of scissors from his cart and climbed the short stepladder.

Cold metal against skin is what made the drunkard jump, and his eyes move to stare at the boy.

He was a pale, perfect little creature with long platinum blond hair and beautiful blue eyes, and he licked his reddened, moist lips as he carefully... reverently?... worked at cutting the prisoner's clothing off. The man himself was fat and oily, filthy... and lustful. As the child worked, he forgot his location, blood swelling steadily as small, skillful hands stripped him bare, exposed to the harsh light and cold steel. Small fingers lingered near places that when brushed... produced a choked, harsh groan from the occupant of the table, hips straining against their leather strap.

And then the boy stepped down from his ladder.

Bloodshot brown eyes strained to watch as the child went to his cart, and bent over... slowly... to retrieve a basin from the bottom. The man's pulse hammered, and his breath came out in labored pants, as the boy straightened carefully with a deliberately pained-sounding sigh. He returned and climbed the two-step ladder, dipping a sponge in the cold water, wordlessly beginning to clean the prisoner as his long white hair worked its way forward over his shoulders to brush against damp skin.

Once this was complete and the basin was returned again to its cart, the child yet again climbed his stepladder. Only this time, now that the man was more than half-blind with animal lust, the boy made eye contact from beneath pale lids and long eyelashes, and smiled radiantly. He bent slowly, ever so slowly, his lips parting carefully and hot breath washing over that straining, throbbing...

A swirl of the tongue, a widening of the jaw, the boy's head began to slide upwards and downwards with agonizing slowness, his throat constricting in a steady rhythm to create suction. The man below him screamed, cried, begged, thrashed in his bonds... tighter and tighter, closer and clos--

The door opened as the hot mouth released him, trailing saliva, and a form nearly as monochrome as the room stepped in. The prisoner didn't notice, too busy pleading with the small angel to let him finish, too blind with lust, as the boy in question bowed to the Admiral and wordlessly took his stepladder away from the table.

In fact, the man didn't notice anything except his own straining need until the razor-sharp scalpel penetrated its base, and slit up to the tip.

-_That_- got his full attention, and a different kind of scream. Megan Jones retained said attention until, hours later, the body ceased to breathe at all. Scarlet blood oozed down the sides of the table and straight down the drain, contrasting with the white tiles in the too-bright room.

The extra basins from the cart now contained a complete human skin, and the small and large intestines respectively.

"Lady Admiral, what about that woman we captured?" the boy enquired politely, setting that last basin on the cart as the Admiral removed her gloves, her tools already cleaned and put back in their case. The child was permitted to ask questions of her and to do as he wished with patients, so long as he prepped them and did not interfere with her work.

For that price, Jones had a competent and trustworthy aide, who wanted for no extra authority and no court favors, and who could more than stomach watching her work. Why he seemed fascinated with the soon-to-be-dead, she didn't know... and quite honestly didn't care.

Megan looked at him, vaguely expectantly, one coal-black eyebrow raising just slightly.

"I surely thought she would already have come to you, Lady Admiral." he clarified in his usual purr, acting for all the world like they were talking of the weather and not the torture and execution of a wanted criminal.

"When Lord Galcian gives the word, Tannusen."

"Aaah," the boy clasped his hands behind his back, smiling charmingly up at her, "soon, then."

"Perhaps. But it is said she harbors feelings for our Lord Galcian, and feelings are an infecting weakness."

"Lord Galcian is not so foolish."

"Perhaps, we shall see."

The door was shut behind them, and the remains of Todd of Esperanza, known rapist, were left behind.

"What the -_hell_- is going on down here!"

The unwelcome exclamation from the side tunnel drew Ramirez's bored gaze as an angry-looking lieutenant stormed into the wide bottom chamber, face red. The smell of cooking fish permeated the room, and the remains of several Pyri enchantments still lingered in the air, making the Silvite's magic-sensitive skin tingle.

It took the lieutenant a moment, but he finally focused on the supposed recruit, where he currently leaned against the near wall with his arms crossed. Ramirez pushed away from the stone behind him and saluted, holding it until the infuriated officer stormed over, and further still until it was grudgingly returned.

"Well! Better make it good, recruit, or I'll split and cook -_you_-! Who told you to do this?"

"Admiral Ramirez, sir." he replied calmly, producing from his uniform the paper he'd written and sealed after mess. The lieutenant snatched it from his hand and stared at it a while.

"You take that up to the General's office. Right now." the other growled out, shoving the parchment into Ramirez's chest before turning and storming away. The Silvite sighed lightly, smoothing the letter between his gloved hands and then re-folding it, turning to make his way up to De Loco's former office.

Said office was all the way up at the top of the mountain, and so it took a while to reach by foot and lift combined. Fifteen minutes had since passed by the time the disguised Admiral entered the final corridor, and that was with his admittedly fast-paced stride. The mines hadn't been designed with much besides machines and slaves in mind, clearly. Annoyed despite himself at the simple lack of efficiency... why couldn't the lift shafts go all the way up and down?... he nearly missed it.

Nearly, but not quite. Ramirez's left eyelid twitched, his fingers turned into fists, and he came to a halt just outside the General's office door.

And stared, annoyed beyond all rational reason, at a portable stove.

It had the nerve to -_glimmer_- in the corridor's inadequate lighting, from where it sat just beside the office door. Like it was waiting for him, as absurd as that was. Ramirez turned his head left, and took a long look down the corridor. Then right... another long look down that direction. No one. Smiling grimly, and not thinking much about what he was doing, the Silvite raised one clenched hand and contemplated it a moment.

The thud of fist impacting metal echoed dully through the corridor.

Followed by a startled hiss that had nothing to do with bruised knuckles.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	12. entry 12 :: tarnished silver

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 06.23.2005. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 12: tarnished silver )

The thud of fist impacting metal echoed dully through the corridor.

Followed by a startled hiss that had nothing to do with bruised knuckles.

Ramirez knelt, scooping a few glimmering, metallic coins into one gloved hand. He allowed his fingers to move beneath the metal disks, letting the surfaces glimmer without really seeing them at first, staring for a moment through the jarred door of the grill's lower compartment.

It was full of these coins, absolutely full. His moment of rash behavior had jarred a single pile, the top few coins tumbling out the opening when the door swung loose.

The Admiral took a deep breath, steeling himself before letting himself study the faces of the coins. Glittering golden discs, currency, money. Absolutely unnecessary in this era, and illegal. Of course, you might not care about that if you're planning to -_change_- the era. Ramirez's eyes narrowed speculatively.

His mind churning away as he stared at the dog's head crest on the gold coins, fingers curling around them as he stood again. The Admiral had uncovered many plots against his Lord over the years, but most of them had been by civilians, or at the tower. He had never supposed he would come across something this horrendous on a simple assessment mission...

/ _But perhaps... this may be why I am here. My Lord may have suspected this._ /

His musings were interrupted by another soldier rounding a far corner. The Silvite quickly hid his captured evidence in the palm of his glove, turning to watch the man approach as he nudged the grill's ajar door shut again.

"Hey now, there, you leave that grill alone." the approaching man said in a slightly nervous tone, "I'm just now coming on shift to keep an eye on it for the General. He's very insistent that no one mess with it."

The soldier snorted, oblivious to Ramirez's suddenly murderous mind set.

"Anyway, I heard what you were -_doing_- down there, recruit, so you better get on in there before the General hears second-hand and doesn't see that fancy letter you've got, first."

Ramirez stared at the other man, his expression flat and unfriendly.

"And what's so special about this grill?" he asked, in careful tones.

"No idea." said the soldier, "I heard the delivery personnel call it 'a golden opportunity', though, and the General laughed, so I suppose we're going to start having more fried stuff at mess. Supposed to be more efficient than the ones Mendosa built in years back."

"Ah."

And with that, Ramirez whirled on one foot and knocked on the General's door, well aware of the dog crest on the banner beside it. He remembered the nervous messenger in Soltis tower as his knuckles rapped against the wooden door, his right arm tensing in a peculiar, but familiar way.

/ _And this, is why everyone is right to be so scared of me._ / he thought coldly as the door was opened by an assistant, and he was ushered in. / _I've killed traitors on less evidence than this._ /

But he would ask him directly, of course. Just to see if he scared the man. Ramirez pushed past the guards stationed inside the doorway and stalked to the General's desk, flinging two of the three captured coins onto the wooden surface.

The General seemed surprised, but when he picked one of the coins up by reflex and studied the surface, he smiled.

"Ah, they have arrived!"

"Yes. They -_have_-." Ramirez growled, feeling his temper snap. So the traitor admitted he'd been waiting for his new currency to get here!

"Would you like yours now, or with the others?" the General asked, looking down at the paperwork on his desk and shuffling through the small stack for something. The Admiral's fingers flexed on his right hand, just -_so_-, and the silver armband far up his right arm loosened and dropped silently into his hand.

It wasn't even an eye blink before the fully-formed silver sword was slicing the air. Only a startled shout from the guards audibly marked the moment as the General's body slumped over the desk. Blood went everywhere, his head hit the floor with a sick sound and rolled... to be accidentally kicked out of the way by the charging pair of guards. As they came within Ramirez's range, however, they sealed their own fates.

The one on the right was left twitching on the floor, clutching at his innards and gurgling mutely through a slashed throat, the cut going from chin to navel. The other managed to swing once, twice, before the gore-soaked blade came from the side in a vicious stab. An ear split, then a skull, and the blood and guts weren't alone on the floor with the bodies.

Ramirez whirled to chase the fleeing assistant, the man so frantic to escape the office that he wasn't even shrieking for help. The sword slid home between his ribs from behind with deceptive ease, blade scraping audibly against bone. That grating sensation traveled up the blade into the Silvite's hand, elbow bending as the sword burst out the other side of the assistant's rib cage. -_Now_- the man screamed, a desperate, bubbling sound.

Ramirez brought his other hand to the sword as well, jerking it free with a harsh spinning motion and chopping deeply into the side of the man's neck at the end of the movement. The assistant dropped, convulsing, the cut not quite clean enough to sever the brain stem in one shot. Both hands still on the hilt of his weapon, the Admiral brought the blade down fast and hard, ending it swiftly in a final splash of arterial spray.

Time was of the essence, and he had no time to dwell on the carnage he had wrought. Ramirez wiped his sword clean of blood and gore on the General's upturned back before allowing it to form back up into his sleeve, becoming an armband once again.

Ramirez quickly stripped off his uniform jacket and laid it over the General's slumped body, hiding the stump of neck in supposed respect. The head itself, off in the corner, he would ignore for now... later saying he hadn't been able to find it in such a short time. He knelt carefully in the blood next to the assistant, being certain to leave evidence of his knees and shins in the cooling puddle as he stood again.

He staggered out of the office, wide eyed and shaking. The corridor was empty, the guard had left, and Ramirez took a deep breath before shouting for help.

"So when you got there, everyone was already dead?"

"N-no, sir." Ramirez ducked his head, careful to keep his revulsion twisted, warped to appear as if he was scared and sickened, rather than repulsed and angry. He wasn't much of an actor, but, as long as there was something for him to change, just a little bit, he could manage. As it was, the smells of blood and released bodily fluids were still thick in his nose, and the sound of a loosened head hitting the concrete floor still echoed in his ears. Perfect fodder for the results he wanted.

"Who was still alive?"

"The assistant, sir."

"And so? What happened?"

"The assistant let me in, sir, and then..." here he faltered, intentionally, taking a page out of Admiral Jones' book. Pauses, she'd once told him after he had watched her interrogate a pirate, could be as telling as what was actually said. "And then..."

"Spit it out, recruit."

"He closed the door, sir, and then something... something moved behind him." Ramirez swallowed, making sure his darkened hair hid his angry eyes. "And then something... moved -_through_- him, sir. R-right through his ribs a-and nearly t-t-touching me... and then... and then..."

He cast his thoughts far back in his mind, skimming over executions and battles, looking for something truly horrible. It settled with a snap, on a night filled with ashes and spotlights, the bare ribs of the Delphinus and the sticky, bloated remains of the pirates inside. The smells are what came back to him the fullest, and he choked on his bile before thinking better of it.

Ramirez bent over double in his chair, and heaved.

"Oh -_moons_-..." he gasped, shaking.

"Disgusting." his would-be superior growled. "Absolutely disgusting. Don't plan on making much of a soldier, do you?"

The irony wasn't lost on Ramirez, but, he kept it firmly bottled down.

"Well, it's clear that it wasn't you, anyway. Not even a drop of blood on your sword or courage in your gut. Admiral Jones might be brought in if we don't catch whoever -_did_-, though." the man threatened, only vaguely heard.

The name Jones, now that his mind was scrambling around in the past, brought unbidden images to the surface. Bright lights of the examination room on the Monoceros, his arm bleeding profusely as a pair of skillful hands blotted the blood away and cleaned the wound. They had cracked a sacrulen crystal before resorting to needle and thread when the magic failed to fully take hold of the Silvite's skin.

Another time flashed to mind; a dark, empty room and a spell-welded door. The sounds of fleeing pirates outside. Jones' cold, monotone voice coming from just behind him and enquiring 'and what -_now_-, clever Admiral?'.

"Did you hear me, recruit?" a harsh voice knocked him out of his thoughts, "Report immediately to the barracks! That means get out of my sight!"

"Yes, sir." Ramirez said belatedly, standing and turning to leave, entirely forgetting to stagger or at least look hopelessly sick. Just as well that nobody was looking, now that he'd made a nice mess of the interrogation room.

It was several days of polishing and scrubbing later that Fourth Admiral Wren was due to actually appear at sunset. Ramirez didn't quite scramble into his place at the top of the mountain like everyone else did, but, he was only just settled when a familiar form loomed on the horizon.

The Monoceros.

He felt something in his throat clench tightly. How -_dare_- the bastard use -_his_- flagship! Was that his crew on board, too? His Shadows and his helmsmen, taking orders from that pitiful excuse for an Admiral? The dying sunlight shimmered against the lone warship's familiar external hull as it drew closer, propellers churning in the air.

Ramirez quickly bit down on his resentment as the craft pulled up, slowly, to within gangplank range of the edge of the mountain's sheered top. There, it hovered ponderously, waiting for the metal walkway to bridge the space between. The Silvite was slightly consoled by the fact that the new Admiral didn't, at least, deign to leap off the deck of the ship while it hovered overhead, as he himself often did.

Finally, once the men around Ramirez started to fidget nervously, Wren emerged from the ship and strode across the gangplank, flanked by two soldiers. Thankfully, they weren't Shadows... Ramirez wouldn't have known what to think if his own elite forces had been following the usurper around.

The two blond Admirals had something of a staring contest as the newcomer drew nearer, and Ramirez wished fervently that he wasn't here undercover. He wanted to stride forward and demand answers and demand them -_now_-, ideally wiping that knowing smirk off the traitor's face.

Wren took up his place in front of the rows of standing soldiers, clearing his throat.

"As you all know," he began, "I am here to inspect this mine. Of course, it has already come to my attention that your General has been assassinated, and it is my duty as one of the two Admiral's here, to solve this puzzle."

Two Admirals? The soldiers stirred in alarm around Ramirez, who openly glared at Wren from the back row.

"Fortunately for almost all involved, there isn't much of a puzzle to solve."

More stirring, a few dared to whisper to one another.

"I have been informed of the damage done and the time frame given. I know of only one man who could have accomplished this heinous act with such viciousness and speed, and not been himself killed." Wren smiled, "Also, he happens to be -_here_-, right at this very moment, which doubles his likelihood of being the murderer."

Two guards from the ship silently came up behind him, he felt their looming presence.

"Ah, Admiral Ramirez." Wren lifted his voice and chin, smiling slyly at him as he blew his carefully-created cover sky high. "What a... pleasant surprise."

Ramirez's breath left in a hiss between his clenched teeth as every eye on the mountaintop came to rest on him, the closest besides the guards backing quickly away. Realization spread like a virus, looking at him and knowing he was Ramirez suddenly made it as plain as day. The ink in his hair had only hid him because no one had -_suspected_- he could be the Admiral. Any resemblance had been shrugged off as coincidence.

Until now.

"Wren." Ramirez spat, "What do you think you're doing?"

"My job." Wren replied, smile widening before he addressed the guards, "Lock him up!"

Of course, that didn't go over so well. In a flash, Ramirez had his military-issue saber drawn from his hip, gleaming in the dying rays of sunlight as he jumped aside, narrowly avoiding being tackled by a guard. The other drew his own weapon as he turned to face the Silvite, jade green locking with deep blue, before the Admiral side-stepped deliberately.

Wren's slash pinged off the armor encasing the guard's torso, startling an oath from the one who had nearly stood up -_into_- it. Unlike the guards inside the mine, these were outfitted in the old Valuan armor, sans helmets. Ramirez didn't take more than an eyeblink to analyze this fact before he swiped at Wren, causing the other blond to stagger backwards.

In that moment of weakness, Ramirez pulled the saber back and -_lunged_-, letting go of the blade at the correct moment so that it sailed forward and buried itself in Wren's unprotected thigh. Thus far the rest of the mountaintop had been staring, unsure what to do, but when the Silvite's signature weapon appeared seemingly out of nowhere they mostly turned and fled.

Only a handful remained, and they drew their weapons to join the guards and the crippled Fourth Admiral.

"Where there is light," Ramirez intoned, raising his Crystal-embedded left hand, "there is... darkness." the Crystal -_pulsed_-, he stepped forward and promptly vanished.

"Sword of the Dark Moon!"

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	13. entry 13 :: jade and crimson

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 06.05.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 13: jade and crimson )

The scent of blood, metallic and sharp, permeated the air. Two bodies lay by the side, unmoving and forgotten in the green light of the moon. Green glinted sharply off of blades and the edges of armor, sparkled against an upturned eye belonging to one of the bodies on the ground. It shimmered in pools of blood, and turned the substance to an inky, near-black. There was no true black in this light, nor was there white, everything... was a shade of green.

Green was the new color of brutality.

Up here on top of Moonstone Mountain, there was very little to break up the moon's direct glare. Indeed, the sheered cap of the mountain was level with the fields of cloud cover, a veritable meadow of glinting green water particles stretching as far as the eye could see. It leant the stage of this fight an eerie lack of reality, as though--were you to step off the edge of the ground--you would simply step on the fog and stroll away.

Thankfully, Ramirez was not prone to such foolish ideas. And even if he had been, after he'd broken his stance and charged one of his foes who had been standing apart from the rest, he'd have known better. The soldier had screamed as he toppled, collapsed over the side as Ramirez whirled in place, military-issue boots creaking from the fog and churning up the dirt. He'd crouched, then, back to the edge and legs braced, sliding to a halt with the fingers of his left hand touched down and dragging through the soil. His blade and his stare never wavered.

And then the Silvite charged back into the fray, systematically attacking and defending, chopping away at Wren's guards' numbers. He was careful to keep from the edge, careful to stay maneuvered so that they didn't get around behind him. It was a constant dance, a constant swirling of motion... two men broke into a run to his right, trying to circle his form, and he surged backwards--carefully aware of the edge of the mountain--to intercept them.

One managed to stop, staring at him, and the other's momentum carried him into the jagged side-points of Ramirez's sword. A pained and startled scream, the Admiral gripped the hilt in both hands, and -jerked- sideways so that the points came tearing free and the rest of the blade raked across the unprotected abdomen.

That one hadn't been wearing the Valuan armor, and a third body slumped to the ground in the froze green light. And then he whirled to counter the movements of another three guards, with two more closing in. They were persistent, and more of them kept leaking from the mountain to assist the Fourth Admiral. There wasn't even time to cast spells.

Occasionally he would break free of the never-ending press of soldiers, to clash with Wren himself. The Fourth Admiral's yellow-blond hair looked sickly in this light, his red-brown eyes dark and dead like coagulating blood. A definite contrast to Ramirez, whose blackened hair simply took on a green cast and whose jade green eyes--already glinting with malicious intent--took on an almost demonic green fire. The whites were the truly discontenting part, no matter who you looked at, live or dead, the whites of everyone's eyes were a light mint green.

Blades crashed. Jagged, bloodied points caught and held Wren's carefully-maneuvered chop mere inches from Ramirez's eyes, and he braced... pushing the newer Admiral's blade steadily aside. A shove took Wren off balance again, but he had no time to follow up on it as an armored guard tackled him from the left.

His breath left him in a single, painful burst--stars blasting through his head with the impact against the hard ground. And then a thin line of cold steel pressed against his neck.

"Now, now, Admiral Ramirez. Lord Galcian would hate for you to die before he could deal with you personally." Ramirez opened his eyes, unaware of having closed them in the first place, and stared up along Wren's flawless saber to glare at the smug Fourth Admiral himself. The green moon seemed to sit on his shoulder, from Ramirez's point of view, like a deformed bird. Or perhaps it simply looked over the other Admiral's shoulder to match gazes with Ramirez, like a concerned on-looker.

"Admiral Wren." someone said from outside of Ramirez's moon-filled line of vision. The moon was growing... growing... coming closer. "I believe he's got a concussion."

The Silvite's vision swam with green light, swirling tighter and tighter. It was making him feel dizzy. Moments later his exhausted body gave into the head trauma, and the Silvite fell into the waiting arms of unconsciousness. Who gave a fuck what Wren was trying to say to him, anyway? He could rot in hell.

"Come on Ramirez."

Ramirez groaned, his head... his head felt like it was full of uncut moonstones. Just rattling around with sensitive gray tissue, swelling...

"Come on, Ramirez." the voice wouldn't leave him alone. "Come on, we've got to get you out of here."

He tried to tell whoever it was to go the hell away. Ramirez was awfully busy just now, having his brains sliced to bits and his skull puffed up like a balloon. Couldn't they see he was busy? Come back later when I'm not James, he thought he might have said, I'm busy catching balloons to stuff in my head. Lord Galcian said to...

"Ramirez, they're going to kill you if we don't get you out of here."

Who were 'they', and why should he give a shit? He was busy, damn it, busy! Wait, what was he trying to do again? Lord Galcian said to... what had he said? Give a tour! Yes, he was supposed to give a tour! That's why that voice sounded so familiar.

"The dining hall is on the left." he slurred.

"Alley..."

"Of course."

The small sounds of something climbing up into the room were followed by a pair of strong hands grasping his ankles. -_That_- got his attention quite forcefully, and Ramirez sat bolt upright, eyes shooting open and hands locking onto the forearms of his would-be abductor. Confused and angered jade green met incredibly cold dark blue. The stranger's gaze seemed to bore into his own with an intensity only Lord Galcian had previously managed. It -_burned_- with ice, systematically sheering away the immediate lingering effects of his concussion.

"He's going to -_kill_- you, Admiral." she said, her rough voice pitched low, "Can you not hear the gas being loaded?"

Ramirez glanced upwards at the ceiling, the short duct shaft punctured by hundreds of tubes, just like the system in Soltis Tower's dungeons. They were pumping air right now, but could be made to put anything into the cell's containment. Very faintly, now that it was pointed out, he could hear the clicking of canisters being loaded.

"That is my Lord's right." he answered, head throbbing as he looked at the woman again, still trying to pry her vice grip off of his ankles. She had sharp features around those deathly cold eyes, and skin was pulled tighter in places by scar tissue, to the point of disfigurement. Long brown hair was bound tightly into a single whip-like braid, grey showing clearly at the temples.

Her close-fitting uniform of dark blue and grey had dull hourglass-engraved buttons. Just like Lena's vest, the treasonous wench, who watched the proceedings from a trap door in the floor, slightly ajar. They were both members of the Sands, he belatedly realized, glaring darkly at the green-eyed fool from around the other's form.

"That is not his right any longer, Admiral." said the ugly woman with the grip on his ankles, tightening her fingers painfully, "Your Lord Galcian has changed over these years of power. He's grown weaker and crueler with every passing day, and if--!" she interrupted his furious exclamation, "you wish to fight me over that, you're welcome to. But not here."

Ramirez glowered.

The warrior leaned close to him, putting her weight on his ankles until he was choking down a wince. She continued forward until he reflexively leaned backwards, and then she smirked.

"Just -_try_- me. I dare you." and then she rocked back onto her heels and began systematically dragging him for the trap door. "Hey, just think. If worse comes to worse, you can always throw yourself into Deep Sky."

"I'll throw -_you_-, first." he snarled, still trying to get his legs free.

"That's the spirit!" she quipped, hauling him up onto her shoulder like a bag of moonstones as Lena fully opened the hidden door and got out of the way. She still had that grip on his ankles, which were hurting smartly. He barely had time to grab her braid for assurance against being dropped before the woman jumped down into the secret tunnel. When she landed, her bony shoulder drove more forcefully into Ramirez's stomach, knocking the air straight out of him.

The hatch was closed on the faint hissing sound of poisonous gas filtering into the cell.

"Set me -_down_-." Ramirez snarled threateningly, but his words were patently ignored as he was summarily carted down the dark passage. At least this explained how Lena had managed her brilliant escape from the Soltisian dungeons, although he'd have loved to know when they'd managed to carve such carefully-constructed doors into the prison cells of multiple continents.

/ _Too much time on their hands._ / he mentally groused, stoutly refusing to be impressed.

"Ah, here we are."

The Admiral was abruptly set on the ground, blinking at what appeared to be a poorly-lit... dock? Underneath Moonstone Mountain? It was a simple cavern without a bottom, and far beneath the edge of the grounded craft he could see the swirling clouds of Lower Sky, the walls of the cavern extending below their surface. The cavern dock was lit, dully, with moonstone torches, and the ship itself, if he could really call it that, was barely the size of a Valuan life-boat.

Rounded, but with straight sides. A dome of an unknown substance covered the top, and the small craft sitting lifelessly on the edge of the ground both caught his curiosity and flared his unease. Were those... wings folded along the sides?

"We're not getting in that, are we?"

"Of course we are, Admiral. You wouldn't be wanting to back down -_now_-, would you?" the rude one snorted, crossing her arms as she stared him down. She then added, "Make no mistake, Admiral. If you try to fight me before we get where we're going, you'd better make sure you win."

"Or what, you'll -_kill_- me?" Ramirez leveled on her a look of pure contempt. "How very original."

"That's just the start, you stupid Silvite." she advanced on him, using his moment of surprise to throw him the rest of the way off his mental balance. "I'll cut your body up and scatter the pieces across Esperanza for the dogs to chew on. Then I'll turn your Crystal--yes, I know about it--into a weapon to use against your precious, corrupt, rotting Lord Galcian."

The ugly woman stopped, and tilted her head to the side, dark eyes glittering coldly in the faint light.

"Does that strike you as original enough, Admiral?"

"I'll kill you." the Admiral in question hissed, fists clenching.

"Fine with me. But you'd better wait before you try it." she snorted, and they glared at one another for a long moment, before she pointedly turned her back on him to address Lena.

"Hey, where the hell did our pilot go?"

The Monoceros was, indeed, a fine ship.

Fourth Admiral Wren leaned back in the Captain's chair, ignoring for the moment the ship doctor working on his propped-up leg, and considered his options. Continue the plan? Most certainly. Nothing had been compromised, and in fact... the First Admiral (-_Former_- First Admiral, Wren mentally snorted in amusement to himself,) had played right into his gloved hands.

He stretched his arms up over his head and winced as his thigh was jarred, leveling an offended stare on the hapless ship doctor. This wasn't the Monoceros' former doctor, of course, the ship's entire staff had been left at Soltis Tower. Even then, the doctor assigned to the ship had only been there a few years now... the one before -_him_-, though...

Doctor Megan D. Jones.

Wren allowed his thoughts to wander down -_that_- path for a while, before his musings were interrupted by the undocking of the flagship.

Ah, that's right. It was time to go back to Soltis tower, and regretfully inform Lord Galcian of Admiral Ramirez's betrayal. Confirmation was delivered from a scratchy radio that Admiral Ramirez's cell had been gassed, and Wren ordered loqua from the cooks to celebrate.

"I... am never... getting in -_that_-... ever... again."

"Oh, grow a spine, Admiral. It wasn't that bad." Alley said with a smirk, leaning against one of this cavern's many stone support columns, her arms crossed again. Behind her and off to the side he could see their 'pilot', spinning in place on one foot with her arms out like a child's top.

"Whoooo-eeeeee!" said the lunatic, pausing a moment before spinning the other way.

Ramirez felt nauseous with the visual movement, and looked quickly away. He, too, was leaning against a support column, a mere ten feet from the parked craft. Unlike the braided warrior in front of him, however, he was on the verge of falling over from dizziness, and hung onto the stone behind him with both hands. The world was still reeling.

(_A swoop, a dive, the pilot's mad laughter as they narrowly avoided the cavern wall before the ship erupted into Lower Sky..._)

"Not that bad? Not that -_bad_-?" disbelief was plain in his voice. "How was that 'not that bad'! Your damned ship doesn't even stop, I saw that! And your pilot... your pilot is a complete mental case!"

"She's the best C.A.R. pilot there is, Admiral. As for the ship's less-than-satisfactory safety features..." Alley inclined her head with another, darker smirk, "Perhaps you shouldn't have lopped Centime's head off before he completed the designs?"

(_The ship rolled to the side to dodge a school of brightly-glowing skyfish, churned past the stalactites beneath the continent. Finally, it plummeted deeper into the dark swirling clouds, staying just barely above the pressure of Deep Sky. Straps that Alley--she'd finally introduced herself--said were necessary held them to their seats as the ship lurched to the side again. Other than the strange movements and the few hair-raising moments so far, though, this didn't seem so bad. At least the craft was slow._)

"Ugh..." Ramirez was a bit busy getting sick all over again as flashes of their journey to this place burst through his head. "Centime was a pirate."

(_Gauges of all sorts hung dangling from the short domed ceiling. Their pilot, still chuckling, reached up and grabbed one with the hand not in the complex controls in front of her, turning the face so she could apparently check it. The only light inside the ship came from these gauges and the mess of vicious-looking machinery that the pilot manipulated. Something beeped, and the craft was jerked upwards hard enough that Ramirez--who had leaned his head forward out of curiosity--was shoved back firmly against the seat again._

_Alley, strapped to the seat next to him, laughed at his shocked expression as the ship suddenly took on a massive burst of speed..._)

And when it was finally over? What had the pilot done? She'd aimed the little craft for a vague opening in the bottom of some -_other_- continent, and then she'd pulled the fist-sized moonstone that powered it straight out of the engine. The ship had sputtered, the engine had died, and something unfolded from the sides--vaguely visible through the semi-transparent dome.

In a lurching, panicked, horrible moment... the ship had glided in at breakneck speed and came to a rolling stop on built-in wheels, safely inside this cavern. The wings had folded themselves back against the ship again, and all had been silent and still.

Until Ramirez had screamed unintelligibly, thrown off his straps, and wrestled the domed hatch open. A few moments of staggering rubber-legged away from the ship had ended with him here in this spot, grasping the beam behind him and reveling in its solidity.

"I am -_never_- getting in that -_ever_- again." he repeated, vehemently. "Not -_ever_-."

But something told him he was only sealing his fate.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


	14. entry 14 :: the cycle

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 09.20.2005. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 14: the cycle )

"And tell me, Ramirez, has your Lord Galcian done anything he was supposed to besides..." Alley gestured, as though pointing to all of Arcadia, "...take over?"

Ramirez stared hard at her for a lone moment, and when she didn't flinch, he dropped his gaze.

"No."

"Has Arcadia improved since your Lord Galcian took over?"

"..." the Admiral (or was that former-Admiral?) glowered most impressively through a curtain of blackened hair. Yet again, Alley didn't flinch, and Ramirez eventually dropped his gaze. It had been a tiring week, an entire week, since he'd arrived in the underground dock unsteady on his legs and soon to be sick.

One full week, full of pointed questions, from the moment he woke until the moment he fell asleep again. The braided, hideously ugly woman was nothing, apparently, if not incredibly persistent.

A week of this insufferable woman chipping away at his mind, calling things into question that he had carefully ignored. Things that had been wrapped in gossamer spider-webs and tucked away on a forbidden shelf, ideally to never be looked at again. And for the entire week, he'd not managed to throw himself or anyone else into Deep Sky where they all surely belonged.

He wondered how much of that was due to braided warrior's methods. Alley Ashkeveron had bested him in fighting, repeatedly, no matter if he was cold and cunning in his attacks or savage and blood-crazed. Spells were dodged, somehow, and the first time he'd tried to cast Silver Eclipse...

(_Ramirez had had enough of her foolishness, somehow always countering him with nothing but a long-handled spoon in one hand and a dagger in the other. He planted his feet, raised his left hand to his face, and placed his fingertips lightly against his skin. An instant later and he was sprawled on the ground, stunned, with a sore jaw._

_"Oh, you didn't really think I'd let you do that, did you?" the ugly woman had chuckled, "A little too slow, Admiral!"_)

After that, he'd realized his best tactic against Alley was simple swordsmanship. And to be truthful, even though he never scored more than the most glancing of blows, it was easily the best way to vent anger and frustration, and that niggling sense of... grief.

Seated across the table in front of him, the ugly woman sighed and drummed her callused fingertips on the wooden surface between them.

"You're brooding again. Do you need to spar?" Spar? What a funny way to put it. Perhaps it was just sparring to her, but Ramirez always went for blood... as much good as it did him. He was under no illusions as to her not knowing it, either. But she had years and years over him, decades perhaps, and she had been a warrior all of her life... perhaps it was a compliment to his skill that he managed to hold out against her at all.

They had even brought him his sword, these members of the Sands, stolen from the Monoceros, and a familiar uniform ghosted out of Soltis itself. Ramirez clung to the familiarity of the uniform, in the correct way his steel-shod boots clicked against the stone and the weight of the layers of cloth on his shoulders. Pity it wasn't enough familiarity, enough comfort, with which to ignore all the evidence, all the questions brought to bear...

"No."

"And what about my other question, Admiral, are you finally going to answer it?"

The Silvite took a deep, shuddering breath, spreading the gloved fingers of both hands flat against the table, staring at them. Flashes of all he'd seen in Esperanza and since, things he'd only half-seen before then, they all played out in front of him. Alley stopped drumming her fingers, and leaned forward, continuing mercilessly as always.

"Has Arcadia improved, Ramirez?"

Shutting his eyes only made the images more vivid, so he kept them open, unblinking. He released his breath, took another. The Sands had apparently been tailing him from the moment Lena had escaped. They had kept track of him in Esperanza, although Ben hadn't known who he was and hadn't been involved in that particular mission. Ben had been nothing but one of many decoys, a false Sands visible in the city to cover the larger, sneakier, true group.

"No." he barely managed to whisper the words, his voice choked. "It has instead rotted."

The Weaponsmaster nodded, saying nothing for a moment as she straightened again. The truth, now spoken, rang throughout his head. Arcadia had turned to decay, his Lord... his Lord had failed him, failed everyone, and he...

"And what of your Lord Galcian?" she pressed, harsh voice almost too quiet for him to hear. It might have been too much, however, because Ramirez buried his face suddenly in the backs of his hands on the table. His shoulder shook, silently, and Alley... who was no good at giving comfort... simply waited for this to pass.

"He... he has rotted as well." Ramirez barely whispered his realization, horror choking him hard, closing his throat in a solid lump of coal. He felt Alley's stare boring into the top of his head for a moment after she stood, silently, and then the warrior sighed.

"I'll be waiting at the dock." it was an odd sort of understanding, that one in her voice, but a legitimate one nonetheless. "Come and attack when you will."

The Silvite took a deep breath, and nodded, but by then there was no one else in the room to see it. Uncounted long minutes later, he raised his head and stared at the wall across from him. Finally, Ramirez stood, trembling, and made his way toward the dock.

If Arcadia had rotted, then these Sands were still no better.

"I cannot imagine why he did what he did, Lord Galcian." the kneeling blond completed his initial report, "the General was a good man."

"He gave no reason?"

"None, my Lord. And he fought... most fiercely, when I attempted to arrest him accordingly." Wren said, "He took out a half a dozen men, my Lord, in the arrest."

Lord Galcian rubbed at his forehead.

"And four in the original murder, counting the General." the older man mused out loud. "Ten deaths and no explanation. Is he in custody now, Admiral Wren?"

"Yes my Lord, he is being held in a cell on Moonstone Mountain. I did not want to risk him getting loose aboard the Monoceros... he knows that ship too well."

"Quite. I'm certain there is an explanation for his behavior, Admiral Wren, he may simply not have trusted you with it." Galcian raised his stare, calculating, boring into the Fourth Admiral's lowered head. "We will leave in the morning... I must speak with him personally."

"Yes sir."

"You are dismissed. Prepare for our trip."

Wren obediently rose to his feet, unsuccessfully biting back a wince and a hiss of pain as his injured leg protested. Galcian's eyes narrowed.

"You were injured, Admiral Wren?"

"Stabbed, my Lord."

"Admiral Jones will see to you." said Lord Galcian, with a dismissive wave of his hand. The coroner-Admiral in question, standing at attention far to the left, didn't so much as blink as she stepped forward.

"Come along then, Wren of Esperanza." the woman's nearly-monotone voice rang through the audience chamber as she stepped past him. "And try not to die just yet."

It was a quiet procession through the halls of the Soltis tower, but after a long (and limping) few minutes, Jones stopped and opened a door, gesturing him inside. The room was cold, tiny, and tiled. An examination table stood in the center beneath the too-bright lighting, and Wren took in the straps with open interest.

"Where is the wound?" Megan folded her arms, glaring at him. Wren didn't bother to hide the smirk as he pointed to his upper inner thigh.

"Your dear Admiral Ramirez was aiming a bit higher, I suspect."

"Indeed." Jones' eyes narrowed, and she turned to a cabinet in the wall to pull out a rarely-used kit, a black leather case with a handle, filled with objects of healing rather than dismembering. Though either could be used for both, she supposed. "Sit on the table and try not to salivate on the straps, if you please, they've been freshly disinfected."

However, when Megan turned back to the table and patient in question, she found he'd already done so.

Without his pants. Or much of anything, actually, besides perhaps his boots and shirt. The coroner frowned darkly, and Wren leered.

"Well?" the injured blond had the nerve to spread his thighs a bit, "Aren't you going to get to it? I hear you did this sort of thing for--"

"You've heard nothing of the sort." Jones interrupted, voice and expression as cold as Glacia as she set the case down next to him and opened it.

"--all the time." he finished without pause, smirking. The doctor chose to ignore him entirely for a moment, purposefully changing out her white silk gloves for sterile latex. She sprayed disinfectant onto them once they were on, and finally turned back to him.

"Those stitches are sloppy." Admiral Jones said coldly, selecting a healing crystal, needle, thread, and one of her standard scalpels from the case. "You were lounging around on the bridge instead of in a proper examination room, weren't you."

It wasn't a question. Wren's smirk grew.

"I know the Monoceros has the correct facilities, Wren of Esperanza, since I was the one who oversaw their installation." the scalpel was set to work, snipping the tiny, precise stitches that would have been flawless had the stupid bastard at least stretched his leg out properly for the (likely nervous as hell) new ship doctor. Jones would have felt professional annoyance on their behalf if she wasn't busy holding back rage for how he was acting -_now_-.

Wren's interest was pulsing in time with his heartbeat, rising steadily. She ignored it entirely, setting the scalpel aside. She began plucking the bits of suture out of his skin with a pair of tweezers, movements coldly efficient.

And then Wren did something phenomenally stupid. He shifted his hips, rubbing himself against the back of her gloved hand. Jones froze, shocked despite herself, as the Fourth Admiral continued in a sort of slow thrusting motion, and then he groaned.

The coroner was across the room with her gun drawn on him in a heartbeat, resisting the urge to rip off her glove, burn it, and sterilize her -_hand_-. Though it had been protected from actual touch, the body heat had penetrated the thin latex easily, leaving her skin feeling slimy from the indirect contact.

"I would highly suggest that you explain." her voice, cold... unflinching, unwavering. She took some relief in not displaying her discomfort, feeling it would be unbearable if that smirking bastard knew exactly how close she was to simply fleeing the room.

"What's to explain, Admiral Jones?" Wren attempted a purr, and failed miserably at it. Tannusen Ashkeveron he was not. Manipulator, however, he apparently was. "I would highly suggest you put your gun away and -_touch_- me."

The sound of the gun's safety being clicked off, the trigger now fully unlocked and ready to fire, echoed through the tiny, tiled room.

"And why would you suggest such a thing?" she asked coldly, unclenching her affected hand and bringing it to the gun as well, steadying the very slight tremor of disgust at the very idea. Touch him? Ha, maybe with a bullet.

"Because if you don't comply, Admiral Jones, I will never tell you what has truly happened to your dearly departed Admiral Ramirez." he sneered, "And you cannot torture it out of me, your Lord Galcian would never give you permission. I know you have asked before."

The gun's safety clicked back on, and the weapon lowered, but she didn't put it away.

"Now, Megan, don't you want to know? I know that you're still his doctor... tell me, do the facilities you installed on the Monoceros have straps as well?" he said in that butchered purr, and even his voice managed to be slimy.

"Come now," Wren whispered as she slowly approached, hands now empty and furious eyes downcast, "you're going to have to behave, or I'll never tell you where he is. And take off those gloves, my dear Admiral Jones, I want you to get nice and -_dirty_-."

Alley was sitting cross-legged on the ground with her back to him when Ramirez entered the dock. The lightweight, curved blade she favored for their duels was resting across her folded knees, her arms at her side.

"Ready?" her harsh voice, roughened--he suspected--by breathing too much hot ash during his own attack on Nasrad, echoed throughout the enlarged cavern.

Over the course of the last week he had been told by the Weaponsmaster herself that she had, long ago, worked for the Nasultan. He'd dismissed her a year before the Armada's bombardment, having decided that his troops needed no further training. The egotistical fool. She'd been in the city, working as a civilian, when his fleet had arrived and pummeled the defenseless city into ashes and dust.

This she had told him, and many other things besides, though few quite as cheerful and most being observations... things she had seen since Lord Galcian's rule had begun.

"Not yet." he said, approaching slowly. The former Admiral stood next to the scarred woman for a moment before easing himself down onto the ground next to her. She didn't comment... rarely did whenever he did anything strange, she seemed to take most anything in stride.

"What do you want from me?" Ramirez asked after a long moment of silence. "Why was I brought here at all?"

"We want your help." Alley said, not looking at him. "If anyone could form a plan to overthrow Galcian and put things as close to how they were before as possible, it would be you."

The silence between them began again.

"...Any actual assets?" he finally ventured, curious despite himself.

"The C.A.R.s," she ignored his snort, "access tunnels under nearly every Soltisian base and town, a network of spies, a decoy group running out of Esperanza, and about a hundred total fighters. Several of which were active before the change, though most of our manpower is found in those who weren't fighters at all until afterwards."

"I know the tower's every inch, save for perhaps those tunnels." Ramirez said, staring off into space, "and I know Lord Galcian better than anyone. Which means I know that it's hopeless. Even if we could penetrate his guards and security measures, and even if anyone could distract him long enough for me to reach Zelos and disable it..."

"You can't harness it?"

"The only use that would have is to pummel any number of continents... it would do us no good against Lord Galcian himself. And once he'd killed us, there would be no difference made. Just a lot of extra death." Ramirez snorted, "We used to count on our stronger enemies coming to take a shot at him... it beat tracking them all down individually for execution."

"Could you lower Soltis' shields, with Zelos under your command?"

"In a heartbeat. But the moment I did, the entire Armada would be alerted and would swarm in, accordingly."

"I see."

Another long silence stretched between them. Ramirez drew one of his folded legs up, wrapping his arms loosely around the whole and resting his chin on the knee. This is how he remained for a long, long while, deep in brooding thought, his eyes closed.

"I have to stop him." he barely realized that he was speaking out loud. "He'll go mad if I don't, he'll damn himself to a fate much worse than defeat or death. Lord Galcian..." Ramirez took a deep breath, clenching his fists. This was about the limits of his abilities, he knew, this sort of thing was not his... specialty. "Only a few will be able to reach him, and someone has to be able to hold him off long enough for me to reach Zelos. That is what it comes down to." after that, it wouldn't matter much anymore.

"Apparently so."

"You could manage it, but not by yourself. You wouldn't last a minute, alone, despite being able to chase -_me_- all over the place with your sword. I'd never reach Zelos in time, as I'm certain I would encounter plenty of opposition myself."

Alley watched him as he rose to his feet, and began to pace. The Weaponsmaster remained where she was, calm... far too calm, as Ramirez continued to reason things out verbally.

"There's only one group that has ever beaten him in combat, but they are long since dead..."

"Admiral," the scarred woman on the ground blinked at him, but he ignored the interruption.

"Perhaps you and I could defeat him? No, not even then... the tower's every resource would focus on the one battle, we would be dead before he even broke a sweat. Still..."

"Ramirez..." she tried again. This time, he paused, stopping to look down at her with distracted jade green eyes.

"Yes?"

"The pirates... Vyse, Aika, and Fina..."

"Yes, I know, they're dead." he gestured impatiently, resuming his pacing, "the Delphinus exploded, we never found any survivors or lifeboats. Inconvenient of them, now that I have a use for the happy-go-lucky fools."

"They're not dead."

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.

**Oh ye of little faith...**


	15. entry 15 :: fall of the delphinus

A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 09.28.2005. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.

Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.

Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!

**05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. _Please_ just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.**

---- ----: -x- :---- ----  
**Requiem for the Dream**  
( entry 15: fall of the delphinus )

The stairs downwards were damp, slick with rain and mud, and they descended far into complete darkness. Sounds of dripping water echoed up out of the somewhat natural and somewhat man-made caverns, and Ramirez paused at the top, steeling himself for a confrontation.

But even as he did, Alley strode past him and started down, not even bothering to draw a weapon.

The Silvite followed.

The dripping of water and his own, near-silent footsteps weren't the only sounds to reach his ears as they descended into the bowels of former-Valua. It wasn't Alley's own steps, either, for she moved like an insubstantial ghost. No, as they went lower and lower by the light of a torch Alley carried in one hand, the faint sound of humming reached his ears, ran over his nerves like ice-water.

Humming, humming, humming. Without a tune, without a pattern.

He was suddenly very nervous, set on an even higher alert, as Alley slowed her pace and the stairs came to an end. The torch-light didn't reach the edges of the chamber they suddenly stood in, and his guide came to a complete halt.

"Here," she held the torch out to him, eyes in its light just as cold as ever, "I don't need this, you do, so you take it. I've business to attend to down here."

"Wha--"

"They won't attack you, -_Admiral_-. They lack the means. Just continue forward and you're bound to meet up with them."

Before he could argue, she'd slipped out of the circle of light and vanished like a shadow, leaving Ramirez alone with the torch he didn't remember taking. Water dripped, the sound of tuneless humming continued from ahead, and the Silvite began to walk again, expression turning grim.

When Alley had informed him that the trio of pirates were still alive, he'd not believed her for a long stretch of heated argument. Finally, the Weaponsmaster had thrown up her hands and told him to get in the C.A.R. while she fetched the pilot. If he wouldn't believe her on his own, she'd -_make_- him believe.

Right now he sort of wished he'd just taken her word for it, instead of venturing far beneath the ruins of Valua, down into a part of the massive sewage system that hadn't collapsed. Three of his most hated enemies... the only ones who ever defeated Lord Galcian (and ironically, that was why he wanted them now)... were somewhere ahead in this thick darkness.

In the direction of the humming. The incessant, tuneless humming.

"...half the rear propellers were smashed, port side has been ripped completely open, and most of the navigational systems were ground into scrap on top..." Gilder was informing Drachma, quietly, "...the living quarters, the mess hall, the kitchens... crushed..."

Vyse rolled onto his side, away from Enrique's boots, and heaved.

"...everything past this room isn't even pressurized against Low Sky anymore... the engines will probably give out any minute..." Gilder glanced at Vyse, briefly, before continuing even quieter... "...I never thought I'd say this, but..."

/ _...they're all dead... we... we're all dead._ /

Vyse made a small noise in the back of his throat, clenching his eyes shut as the unforgiving reality set in.

"I've..." he choked the words out, "I've failed everyone..."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, kid." Gilder said from the wheel, his tone grim, "You made a mistake. As the Captain, you'll have to live with that, but everyone here knew the risks..."

"It doesn't matter!" Vyse shouted, as though volume alone could fix things, "I failed everyone, after all of that! After -_everything_-!" That small noise grew into a sort of agonized keening as the boy curled in on himself, grabbing his legs and sobbing into his own knees.

"Boy," Drachma was the voice of rough reason, not placating like Gilder. "We'll mourn the dead later, right now we have to take care of the living."

The pirate shuddered, and after a moment managed to sit up, wiping his face. He shoved what had just happened out of his mind, knowing it would just hit harder later, but Drachma had a point...

"Right. Have the Rains stopped?"

"Not yet."

"We need to be ready to move as soon as they do. Where can we land?"

"The engines..." Fina turned away from the monitors, face tear-streaked, "Vyse, the engines won't hold that long--"

"We have to try. Is everyone..." he gulped, "everyone else already dead, or can we..."

"They're gone." Enrique said quietly, "Their lungs wouldn't have lasted longer than three minutes, and we've been trapped under here for longer already."

Vyse felt his throat tighten again. An explosion from below sent tremors through the ship, and his heart jumped.

"Sub-engine three just died." Aika reported in a choked voice.

"The Rains have stopped."

"Go to Valua." Enrique helped Vyse to his feet. "We can land on the Gate, and hide in the sewers until we think of something. Galcian will never think to look there." Vyse nodded, numb, and Gilder eased the crippled warship gradually into acceleration to the North, the craft responding sluggishly with so many propellers gone.

And so it was that the Delphinus limped for its homeland, with dead bodies and broken dreams for its final cargo.

Despite the further burden on the engines, they dared not rise from Lower Sky until they reached the dark skies of Valua. The crumpled, gashed form of the deadliest ship in Arcadia rose from the darker recesses of Lower Sky with sputtering engines and shaking supports. It hovered almost ponderously for a moment, and then angled for the remains of the Great Valuan Gate.

There it impacted hard enough to send the remaining live crew to the floor, jostling the dead, and if they had ever entertained any ideas of going anywhere else in the craft...

Well, those ideas would have been crushed just as surely as the remaining sub-engines between the Gate and the belly of the ship.

"The main engine won't shut off." Gilder swore as Vyse dove out the bridge door, "Vyse, we have to go, now! Lets grab the lifeboats."

But the Captain was staring at the bodies, littered everywhere. Don, Polly...

"Vyse!"

The boy ignored the yelling, running back onto the bridge and grabbing the giant Blue Rogue flag down off of the wall with a violent jerk from both hands. He couldn't just leave them out in the open like this, for the sky fish and the rain, and...

In a matter of seconds he had sliced the flag in half, in quarters, in eighths, until he had as many body-sized shrouds as he could make from the blue fabric. Deaf to whatever Gilder and Enrique were saying, he sprinted back into the ruins, began covering his dead crew.

Three, maybe four people were covered when a large hand came down on his shoulder.

"Boy... dead later, living now. We're getting you kids off of this bomb."

He stared numbly at Drachma, and kept the remaining scraps of flag as the old man suddenly lifted him off the floor and carried him to a waiting life boat. He was dropped inside where Aika already sat, stunned.

Enrique climbed into another with Fina, and Gilder sat in a third with Pow held firmly in hand, his parrot flapping wildly overhead.

"Come on Drachma, get in." Gilder gestured impatiently, his glasses skewed.

"I'll go get another one." the old man said, "Needs to be lighter than you and me, to make it across that chasm. Now go."

It was with a sense of deja vu that Vyse found Drachma shoving all of their lifeboats off, the engines kicking in and taking off as the old man turned back to the Delphinus. Horror coursed through him as he stared, transfixed, as his friend re-entered the ship.

"-_NO!_-" he screamed, or Aika screamed, it didn't matter who it was. It might have been all of them at once.

The main engine, which had been whining steadily rougher this whole time, finally clicked, was silent for a few seconds. And then the machine -_wailed_-... right before the explosion ripped the craft open like a paper toy.

Aika clung to him, sobbing, as he stared back in shock.

And the lifeboats continued on.

There was light somewhere up ahead, albeit a very dim glow. The humming, the dripping water, the sounds of his own steel-shod boots scraping quietly against stone, were soon accompanied by -_smell_-. Sickness, unwashed bodies and stale vomit, rotting food. A muttering, even softer than the humming, reached his ears as the Admiral paused, covering his mouth and nose with one gloved hand.

What in the name of Zelos was going -_on_- down here? Giving up on his determination to not seem alarmed, he shifted the torch to his left hand... uncovering his face again, unfortunately, and summoned his blade to his right. Perhaps Alley had been wrong after all, perhaps they were dead down here.

But what about the humming, and the muttering, and... was that pacing?

Wait, what--!

Something zipped around the distant corner, careening toward him as little but a shimmering blur. Instinctually, he ducked and raised his blade... but nothing impacted.

Ramirez took a deep breath, and looked up.

And almost screamed. The torch hit the floor and sputtered out against the bare stone.

Cupil. It was Cupil. But... but... the creature had always reflected Fina's physical health and mental state, and Cupil was...

Cupil was...

He had never, in all his experiences, seen anything as horrifying as an -_insane Cupil_-, jaw gaping and razor sharp teeth that had never been there before -_gleaming_- from mere inches away. The beady black eyes were glazed, crazed, Ramirez found himself sitting on the floor and staring at the Silvite construct.

Which was drooling, and staring back, unblinking. There was a red glint to those black eyes that he hadn't noticed before, and the Admiral shivered.

"C-Cupil?" Ramirez had opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut, wrenching his eyes away from the construct to stare at the one who had spoken. Fina had come around the corner, ambling slowly with her hand on the wall. "Cupil? What have you foun..." her voice trailed off.

Silvite stared at Silvite. Cupil chuckled gleefully in something barely even resembling its old chirping voice, and zipped away.

"It's alright Fina." When had Alley gotten here! The Weaponsmaster walked past him, and past her, and paused before going around the corner herself. "He's on our side now."

And then Ramirez found himself being clung to by a sobbing Fina, with no real recollection of how she'd stumbled to him so quickly or how he had stood up off the floor to catch her. The sounds of muttering and pacing had stopped, the humming hadn't even paused.

"Fina... what..."

"Ramirez! You're really here... really here..."

"You were the one muttering and pacing." There was one part of the puzzle solved. Fina didn't seem to hear him, she just tightened her grip on his shoulders and kept repeating herself, over and over. "Fina, snap out of it."

The other Silvite ignored him.

"Ramirez is here, it'll all be okay now. Really here, really here, really here..." she muttered.

"-_Fina!_-" Ramirez grabbed her shoulders and pushed her to arms-length. "Snap -_out_- of it!"

"...really here... really here... really here..."

Disturbed, he let go of her, pried her hands off of his uniform, and stepped away. She stepped toward him, and the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up.

Unthinking, he fled around the corner, into the dull light, and nearly tripped over a crouching form on the floor. The source of the humming, one side of her red hair currently being manipulated into a braid by Alley's callused hands, the other side still in a disheveled version of the same style. Likely Alley did this for her every time she came to the sewers, but Aika never did so for herself anymore.

The pirate was rocking slightly on her heels, scarred hands twitching at her sides, the fingertips raw with scar tissue as though the pirate had scrabbled at the stone walls until she'd hit bone. Ramirez fought back his own vomit at the smells of this chamber, which would be almost impossible to air out...

Aika tilted her head up and stared at him, blankly, humming tunelessly. The former Admiral stepped away from her as well, horrified. Was this the same arrogant girl who had always stood next to Vyse and backed up his every ridiculous claim? And where was Vyse, then?

He looked all around the room, searching for a sign of the pirate. Off in the corner stood two cutlasses in their sheaths and a giant boomerang, all three items dusty with lack of use. A pile of blue and white cloth was on the floor near them, and it was even dustier.

"Where..."

"He's under the blankets over there." Alley pointed at what Ramirez had assumed was a garbage pile of cloth, barely cleaner than the blue scraps by the weapons, and in much worse condition.

There were no sounds, no visible movement.

"Is he alive?"

"He is. I just checked on him a moment ago. Ramirez..." the Weaponsmaster sighed, and he stopped, unaware he'd even been crossing the room to the makeshift bed. "Be careful, he... no one ever knows what he'll do when he's shocked into doing anything at all these days."

"I believe I can defend myself against an unarmed, insane pirate child, Weaponsmaster."

"I know you can. Just don't kill -_him_-."

That gave Ramirez pause again, but then he nodded. Alley went back to her braiding and the former Admiral crossed the rest of the way to the pile of blankets, staring down at the pile as though his glare alone would salvage this situation. If the pirates were all too insane to fight, their use was nil. If they could be salvaged...

Not one for delaying the inevitable, Ramirez reached down, took a handful of the blankets, and jerked them back in a single, savage movement.

-- --: -x- :-- --  
Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.  
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.  
Never steal if you value your spleen.


End file.
